Fewer veterans than last year?
In issue number 16/1963 of Automobil Revue, I stumbled across the motor vehicle statistics for Switzerland as at September 1961. Here not only the current vehicles were presented, but for once the older cars of the time were also analyzed.
At that time, 31,800 cars older than 12 years were registered. This represented 5.5% of the total stock of 579,014 registered cars (including station wagons).
According to today's definition, these were predominantly youngtimers, including 3,109 Fiat, 2,641 Citroën, 2,436 Willys (Jeep), 2,254 Volkswagen, 1,725 Peugeot, 1,717 Chevrolet, 1,302 Renault, 1,290 Opel, 1,280 Morris, 1,152 Austin and 964 US Ford.
The list of "real veterans", i.e. vehicles from the pre-war generation that were already at least 25 years old at the time, included 124 Adler, 20 Hanomag, 24 Wanderer, 21 Bugatti, 7 Chenard et Walker, 17 Delage, 28 Delahaye, 30 Hotchkiss, 25 Salmson, 27 Talbot, 17 Jowett, 5 Bianchi, 59 Steyr, 47 Czech Minor, 6 Praga, 41 Tatra, 27 Graham and 44 Terraplane. It was estimated that 363 Nash, 122 Hudson and 159 Packard models built before 1949 had been in service for 15 to 20 years.
All in all, a generous estimate of the number of genuine classic cars on Swiss roads in 1961 is probably 1,500 to 2,000, a fraction of today's total. And even the number of pre-war Bugatti or Talbot cars has probably increased miraculously to this day.
