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Subject to availabilityBig Yellow Taxi (well, petite yellow
914) time... The fi rst 914 I ever saw
was owned by a German tourist
and parked on the roadside in a
Worthing side street on a gloomy
winter afternoon of 1970. An
memorable occasion preserved
on 35mm slide fi lm in the family
archives by my keen amateur
photographer father.
Three years later, and by then
owning my fi rst car, one of my
weekend pastimes was to go
window shopping at local car
dealers showrooms. One of the
ultimate destinations for such
pursuits was Malaya Garage in
Billingshurst High Street, which
served as a Porsche main
dealership for West Sussex
and Hampshire. The thrill was
in seeing what could be viewed
through the window glass (one
didn’t dare enter onto the
showroom fl oor for a closer look!This was an era when vibrant
yellows and oranges were being
supplemented by vivid greens
and a wild deep purple.
Brand new 911s and the (very)
occasional 914s vied temptingly
as eye candy behind the panes.
On numerous occasions (and
always with disappointing results)
I would try and capture them on
fi lm. This was the era of TriFCA
120 format prints, which
wooed you with cheap mail
order prices and “free”
additional thumbnail extra
copies (remember those?).
In hindsight, the results
were awful, with indiff erent
print quality that in all too few
years turned from dull and
foggy to seriously faded.
I have come to realise how
comparatively rare photographs,
specifi cally of garage showroom- and even high street shop –
displays from the 1960s
onwards now are.
Hindsight, of course, is a
wonderful thing and back we
gave little thought to recording
our surroundings and day to day
life for posterity. Several times
already this year I have searched
the internet looking for old
photos of specifi c garage
showrooms – including, now,
Malaya’ – and drawn a complete
blank. The same applies to
well known model shops of
the past. Like the glass in their
front windows, they have
become ghosted into
invisibility over time, because,
as aspiring consumers, rather
than potential historians,
it was their contents that we
were so focused on. Sadly,
this means that all we are left
with now are memories ...
Now, where’s my camera?Ghosts of window shopping past
Stephen Paul Hardy re ects on missed opportunties and the bene ts of hindsight...
august 2019 | http://www.modelcollector.com 81Write to us at: Letters,
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