Merry Christmas ... as a starting point
12/25/2024
Merry Christmas - with a children's racing car under the Christmas tree?
With a rattling petrol engine, really? What a sacrilege ...
No need to worry! That was in 1959, 65 years ago, on the cover of the Christmas edition of "L' Automobile", still the biggest French automobile magazine today.
Climate catastrophe, forest dieback, catalytic converter, diesel particulate filter, CO2 law, ecological footprint and so on and so forth - not even the terms existed. The automobile as a mass phenomenon was still in its infancy, and the best-selling car was the Volkswagen, a pre-war design.
But in the same year, the Austin Mini also made its debut - after decades of futile attempts by innovative engineers to establish front-wheel drive, even with a transverse engine, as a new standard design. The Mini: a new future Volkswagen, at a time when the rear engine was still common for small cars. The Mini, which made the car an object, if not a fetish, of pop culture in the sixties.
The two boys with the children's racing car called Danieli 50 cm3 will be around 75 years old today. They were infected with the car virus by family and society. Perhaps they dreamed of a career as a racing driver.
Will there be more and more small cargo bikes for children under the Christmas trees today? And what will we think of them in another 65 years? Will the first Teslas be sought-after classic cars? Will there still be young people who dream of a Bugatti and could even still drive it?
P.S. Of course, we are also showing the entire front page from back then:
