One of Brian Hobbs’ retirement projects is organizing the thousands of auto dealer brochures, media packages and advertising information he acquired beginning in 1963
The retired social services worker and federal government manager has loved cars for as long as he can remember.
His father was a police officer in Hamilton who would give his young son 50 cents every payday to buy a Dinky toy.
Brian ended up with more than 70 of them and could name every car he saw by the age of two-and-a-half. Some of his first words were “Cheb” and “Ash” … Chevrolet and Nash.
But it was a trip to the Canadian National Exhibition in 1963 that kicked off his interest in collecting new car brochures.
After collecting 20 of them, he decided he wanted more.
His aunt was the executive assistant to the vice-president of international relations at Ford world headquarters in Dearborn, Mich. Every year, she’d give Brian a thick world car catalogue containing information on every car built in the world along with the names and addresses of all the manufacturers.
In high school, Brian learned to type. So, he used the family’s Remington standard typewriter to send letters to manufacturers listed in the book. The replies began to flood in.
Not only did the marketing departments send brochures of their new automobiles, in many cases, Hobbs received the entire press kit with factory photos of the cars along with written descriptions.
He has 13 boxes crammed with a wealth of information on domestic cars of the 1960s, through into the early 2000s, along with complete portfolios on rare cars of the world whose manufacturers are long gone.
An example is the full information and photo set of the 1967 Zaporozhetz that was built in Ukraine. He can pull out photos and brochures depicting the 1968 Goggomobile, the Australian Zeta and the Moscovitsh car built in Russia.
He has photos and information on Checker cabs and airport limousines.
Bristol, Borgward, Daimler Sovereign brochures, literature and photos are all neatly filed. One colourful brochure extols the virtues of the 1968 Sabra Sport, a sports car built in Haifa, Israel that was based on the British Triumph.
Brochures show other oddball cars when they were new and available for purchase, like a 1961 Holden (a General Motors car built in Australia), Auto Union cars built in Brazil, Borgward built in Monterey, Mexico in the 1960s and the Vanden Plas Princess from Britain.
He’s kept some of the letters that accompany brochures, photos and press kits sent by car company marketing managers and public relations people. Many of the brochures are for Canadian cars, like a thick colourful book showing all models of the 1968 Meteor. Hobbs’ father bought one new and young Brian learned to drive in that car. He has many brochures on Acadian and Beaumont cars built by General Motors of Canada in the 1960s.
He also has a brochure for a Canadian-built 1954 Dodge Mayfair with a green and cream model on the cover that’s identical to the car he inherited from his grandfather in 1968.
Hobbs’ knowledge of cars is encyclopedic and largely comes from reading the brochures and wealth of information provided by the car companies.
Among his most cherished brochures describe the Mercedes-Benz 600 and the AC 428 sports car introduced in 1972. The letter accompanying the brochure was written by AC public relations manager Thomas Ditton from Surrey, England.
Hobbs has reached the point where he’d like to see the thousands of photos, brochures and literature he collected over the years be made available to enthusiasts.
The Canadian Museum of Science and Technology in Ottawa is currently cataloguing this collection with a view to acquiring and displaying it.
