Here’s a good postcard from my collection to follow yesterday’s badly tinted car in the New Forest. I guess we can call see why but before we get to that (because there’s a nice little detail which you may have missed), there’s a lot more to talk about.

One of things I look for in a postcard is an unusual car just caught by accident in a photo taken of a street or a view. Some that come to mind are the Iso Grifo in the A Gran Turismo lost on the Grand Tour, the Ferrari in Ferrari 250 GT! and the Facel Vega in Facel Vega Blow Up!). This is no exotic in this postcard of the ford in Sidmouth, Devon, but it is a rarity, a rarity in the UK anyway and despite having spent some time on it I cannot identify it.

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The chevrons on those huge mudflaps led me down the Citroen route but I cannot find any Citroen like this. The lack of vents at the back suggest a front engine layout. The wraparound rear window is unusual and puts me in mind of a Mazda. It has external boot hinges suggesting this was a niche model cheaply developed from a mainstream hatchback, but that can’t be right, they would not have spent money on a wraparound window and anyway it is probably in the days before hatchbacks. It has hinged rear windows and a radio, so it’s not a completely base model. This one’s left hand drive and I think that’s an NL on the boot telling us it is on vacation from the Netherlands. (Perhaps it’s Mr. van der Klugt ). Answers on a postcard as they say!

When a photographer sees a ford they need a car to go through it I think, otherwise it just looks like a puddle or a flood. We need a bit of drama in the picture. I have a few fords in my collection and on checking, realised one of them is of a Lancia 2000 Coupé going through a ford in… where? Sidmouth. But it looks like a different ford (see No Fiat in a Ford). I guess all the money they save on bridges down there goes on the folk festival.

Let’s move on to the yellow car. A fifties Hillman Minx. This postcard is unposted so we have no postmark to guide us on date, but I reckon mid sixties. I’m surprised that Minx survived so long if it had to go through that ford every day. Anyway, swinging sixties or not, there were no garish yellow Hillman Minxes that’s for sure. So this must be the photographer retouching his image. In fact if we look up the road we can see that he daubed the same brush on that Morris Minor and had a bit of fun with his pots of blue and red too. But he’s a little slapdash I think, for he forgot the reflection.

If you like trying to identify cars, search this blog for ‘Mystery’. Some have been solved but there are still quite a few yet to be identified. AS usual leave your answers in the Comments box.