mad question total long shot - Austin Cambridge table mat

[bolognasal spray]

I will pay reasonable coinage to obtain a table mat that featured a photograph of an Austin Cambridge (or similar) parked in the driveway of a house, next to a small stream. It's a rural scene, taken in colour - and I would guess that the mat was made in the 1960s. Iirc it has a cork back and is the size of an average table mat.

 

I had it from when I was very little - 2 or 3. And it was my favourite thing. I hated having to sit down and eat me tea and always wanted to be playing with the few dinky and corgi toys rather than sitting at the table. So perhaps this table mat was my mum's way to get me to eat properly? Or more likely, the mat was just some item that my mum and dad acquired somewhere along the line and which I took a shine to because it had such a charming and ace photograph on it, and I loved cars.

 

Can anyone else remember such a mat? It must have been mass-produced. At one point there would've been thousands of them - probably even tens of thousands. Periodically, I look on eBay for one - but my search terms suck and it's hard to know what words to use.

 

I appreciate this is a bit of an eccentric "want" - but I'd managed to hang on to this damn mat for decades, then 10-15 years ago it just went missing. Every now and again it really gets to me, and I turn the house upside down looking for it. But it never reappears.

[bolognasal spray]

Let me sketch in a few more layers of detail. The dominant colour of the mat is bluey-green. When freshly manufactured, it was probably verdant green - but such was the printing technology of the day that its hues were prone to fading.

 

The time is evening, early evening in summer (or late spring). The location is a shady dell, I seem to recall two or three houses. Bungalows, I think. In the foreground is a stream or perhaps a really slow moving brook - the water is shallow and clear and you can see the bottom which is sandy and looks like it would be great to paddle in. Beyond this water is a road and across that, the aforementioned properties. Only one has a car parked in its drive - its vestigial fins are clearly visible so I assume it's a Cambridge. And there's a couple in shot too - a man next to the car, and a woman the other side. I assumed they were Mr. and Mrs. - in their early 40s maybe. I used to imagine they were outward bound - heading out of their homely dell in the sunny forest, and into to town for some shopping.

 

I need this mat!! I'm distraught that it seems to have gone for good. :  - (

 

Check out the eleventh image on Google when you search with Austin Cambridge table mat:

 

[eddyramrod]

Have you tried asking at a car museum to see if any of the staff remember such a thing?  If you'll find these people anywhere, then surely a car museum is the place.  Or perhaps a museum of urban life, or something similar.

[xkjagnz]

I remember my gran had a set with cars on and probably that one -- metal with cork back. Unfortunately long gone now (both Gran and the mats)

[Scruffy Bodger]

I've never spotted the car in the background before but that's the cover of one of my all time favourite albums!

 

 

Good luck with your search

[Tamworthbay]

There were hundreds of these sorts of thing so it will probably down to sheer luck finding one but stranger things have happened. You may stumble on the pic though and be able to use it to make one of your own.

[chaseracer]

The Saigon car is an A105 Westminster, but I suspect that distinction was not uppermost in Thích Quảng Đức's mind at the time... 

[bolognasal spray]

Or may be it was - and he torched himself because it was chod he was trying to restore, but couldn't get parts for it. It just got too much. I know the feeling.

[chaseracer]

Well, it's a fair step from Longbridge...