Cars of the World:
Some of the better – certainly more useful gimmicks came from the Mobil Petrol
Company in South Africa who issued a set of four informative booklets, bound in
a cardboard case back in the sixties.
Frivolous forecourt freebies
(or the lack of)
During this year (2013) motorists – and of course motorcyclists
– are going to have to stump up considerably more cash to fill their fuel tanks
– thanks in the main to the price of Brent Crude Oil having reached $116 a
barrel – well that and our weakening rand/dollar exchange rate thrown into the
mix for good measure.
According to a spokesman for the AA (Automobile Association),
these monthly increases (shades of Eskom, I fear) are set to continue well into
the second half of 2013, and as the fuel prices stand from midnight May 31
we’ll have to pay R12,10 minimum for a litre of unleaded; while those who drive
diesel vehicles will ‘only’ be looking at having to find 18c a litre more to
continue their motoring.
It has crossed my mind how down the years various petrol
companies have tried to woo drivers onto their forecourts with gimmicks,
giveaways and clever campaigns to try and keep motorists’ allegiance. These
days, if you ask me, they don’t really seem to care – in fact, filling your costly
tank to the brim doesn’t even ensure the pump jockey will even offer to clean
your windscreen …
When I started motoring on two wheels and four it was the
Esso petrol company in the UK that may well have started adding the word fun
come fill-up time on their forecourts. “Put a tiger in your tank,” they claimed.
Use their brand and you were rewarded with a miniature mock tiger’s tail that
you jammed under your fuel cap and simply left there. It was amazing how people
seemed to take notice, point and smile as you drove by.
Another UK petrol company called JET refused to support any
sort of giveaways, instead preferring to offer the cheapest fuel in the land –
albeit 1p (about 4c) a litre cheaper – the catch was you had to put the fuel
into your car yourself – an idea that soon caught on with the other brands in
the early ’70s – and come rain or shine (or snow!) is still the case today.
Meanwhile, Mobil not to be outdone here in South Africa
issued a series of four booklets in a cardboard casing called Cars of the
World. All you had to do was buy their petrol, pay a nominal amount and the
books were yours! Written by J. D. Scheel and V. Hancke, motoring experts of
the time; these books today have become collector’s items, especially if you
have the box they were issued with.
Perhaps the very best free gimmick I can recall was again
found in the UK and called Green Shield stamps. Fill up your car, buy your
groceries, book a holiday – you were issued with what seemed like reams and
reams of these little green sticky stamps. Paste them into a book and when you
had a dozen or so of these albums take them to the Green Shield shop – found in
every major town – and you could exchange them for goods of your choice.
This took quite a while for me to collect a substantial
amount of them because I ran a Fiat 500 (and a Triumph Speed Twin), and you
were assured of ‘quad’ stamps on four gallons (18 litres), trouble was the
little air-cooled Fiat only had a 16-litre petrol tank!
About to get
married, and visiting one of the Green Shield stamp shops, my intended settled
on a set of green desert bowls along with a matching fruit bowl – and we’ve
still got the desert bowls after 43 years, such was the good quality!
Perhaps it’s time our petrol companies ‘lightened up’ a bit
on the poor, hard-done-by motorist. They charge so much for the ‘liquid gold’
I’m sure they could come up with a freebie per tank of fuel sold … how about a
Krugerrand for instance!
