Blue Peter, the children’s television show as much a part of English social fabric as a Royal Wedding or over-hyped sports team, was once allowed access to a Formula 5000 race team.
While there’s nothing new with a bit of youth-focussed marketing, what stands out from this archive footage from 1975 is A) just how casual all the engineering and design is mentioned to its post-school audience, and B) how old-school this industry was compared with today where the sport is classed as the ‘pinnacle of technology’.
Magnesium castings? Aluminium sheet rolling? Five litre Chevy V8s? Footage of a car on fire? David Purley trying to keep it together for a pre-watershed audience describing how shit his tyres were? Not entirely sure these would make it onto today’s kids networks, but here it is in all its pomp:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=3FQ_wBHfEzg%3Frel%3D0%26controls%3D0%26showinfo%3D0
