Today we study another page of our favorite condescending Parisian magazine, Réalités. Just saying it makes me feel pretentious. Réalités. Zee reality of ziss Frenchman sans shirt makes me gag. But nice Studebaker!
I like how they advertise that the Dyna Panhard (incidentally, the name of an exotic dancer at Austin’s Yellow Rose, a strip club which serves free steak/shrimp buffet on Fridays–that’s today!) will drive 80 mph and then show an image of it in a park. Do Parisians drive cars on sidewalks promenades? I am not familiar with these customs. That’s even more arrogant than American cyclists riding 25 mph in lanes made for cars driving 65 mph.
And how would you fit six passengers in that? Is it Sunday morning coming down for Simone? Is she lost, doing the drive of shame back to her appartement? Even in a car the size of a Ford Festiva, driving off-road with children and prams nearby seems unsafe. She could go barreling out of control and hurtle toward the pond. Girl, please! Oh, look–that’s what her license plate says. 1954, please!
I Don't Get It 
Free buffet! Now that is truly American. After seeing Jean Claude van Ew I need to take a shower. How about the copy in the ad talking about high fuel prices. What twenty cents per gallon. Of course that is a French car so Merde. Who knows what they were charging for petrol back in 53. You were pulling our chains on the dancers name, weren’t you.
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Yes, I was, but you cracked me up with your flawless French. I wondered what high prices they meant. Four coins! Sacre Bleu!
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What Things Cost in 1953:
Car: $1,850
Gasoline: 29 cents/gal
House: $17,500
Bread: 16 cents/loaf
Milk: 94 cents/gal
Postage Stamp: 3 cents
Stock Market: 281
Average Annual Salary: $4,700
Minimum Wage: 75 cents per hour
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So if you were a hobo, for just over a buck, you were set with a gallon of milk and a loaf of bread for the whole day. Now it’s time to hop a train!
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Picture no 2 comes as no shock to anyone who’s ever been to France, they have no driving culture what so ever, your life is at peril the moment you leave your front door 😮
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Oh, dear!
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It says that six people can ride in the Dyna Panhard. Not! Unless they’re children (by which she is surrounded).
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That ’53 Studie is a beauty. Heh, I’m a poet.
No, really, that model was dramatic change from the previous Studebaker design (called a “Starlight”) which had existed relatively unchanged and butt-ugly for the prior 5 years.
As for the designer, he’s French. Is more explanation needed?
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I would say touche, but….And both cars are lovely. They make one want to sprawl on them like Tawny Kitaen.
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That Studebaker makes looking at the rest of that pic much easier on the eyes…. oooooooo… nice car.
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k- I need you help
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?
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Never mind.
But thanks
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It’s a Parisian magazine, if the photo was more current we would be subjected to a shirtless Vladimir Putin standing next to a hummer. I think we all can agree we dodged a bullet on that one.
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no doubt
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I can hardly add anything to your general and specific sense of dismay and alarm, Kerbey. Except for my observation of the too-short-shorts for 1954 on the man(!) gawking at the car at the far left of the bottom photo. EW indeed, double barrel.
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It’s almost like he’s wearing blue diapers.
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🙂
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but that is Raymond Loewy and his personal car. His personal car, mind you, not his impersonal car or his car that is maybe his but not his personally. The distinction of “personal” is surely not redundant. This is Réalités, after all. Sacrebleu. (just read on wiki that French people don’t really say that but oh well.)
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