Motor Movies – The Posters is not intended to be a comprehensive reference work for every movie poster that has ever contained a set of wheels. That way would lie madness for me, and boredom for you. Besides, there are hundreds of other fact-filled works in which you can check for my mistakes.
Some things are irrefutable: there will be times when no amount of research will reveal the name of a poster artist, there are occasions where the identity of a vehicle is lost, or has become highly debatable in the ‘artists’s impression’. Equally, I have not attempted to make the posters look perfect; certainly, some have been preserved and linen-backed, but most are in ‘cinema-used’ condition, with that patina of age and handling that can make the poster even more beautiful.
What Motor Movies is designed to do is place before the reader the beautiful, the fascinating, and the bizarre ways in which the motor car (and occasionally its ‘siblings’ (bikes, boats, commercial vehicles, etc) has been depicted since the early days of cinema. We will not be detailing plot lines, the lives of the stars, or too much of the minutiae of the – sometimes graphically over-ambitious – vehicles that appear here.
The movies featured in the book haven’t been chosen for their social relevance, cult status, or box office takings. Mostly, the movies haven’t been chosen at all; this is about the publicity for those movies, the artistry and inventiveness of the posters and lobby cards.
You’ll find a rarity rating for each poster, and, when arcane detail is available, you shall have it. You’ll note that many of the posters have fold lines, and, in some cases, fold separations. This is because, prior to the early 1980s, almost all posters were machine-folded post-printing, before being dispatched to the distributor and various cinemas. These folds have worn over the years of being displayed in cinemas – and thereafter – collections. Later ‘glossy paper’ posters made folding impractical, as the image would often crack when folded. It’s only relatively recently in poster history that they’ve been rolled instead.
And, of course, none of these posters should be available to us at all as, after being displayed in the cinema, they should have been returned to their respective distributor for pulping.
In the glossary you will find a rough guide to some of the jargon associated with movie posters, and a note of the sizes in which many countries produced their posters. For the most part, these sizes are a pretty good guide when considering the originality of a poster. Another guide is paper quality: if it’s too good, especially pre-1970s, watch out!
While original movie posters have become fine investments, the golden rule is: buy the posters you really like, then your enjoyment is guaranteed and any profit is a bonus.
The ‘rarity rating’ I’ve used is purely personal, and goes like this:

1 You can go to your local poster shop and get one
2 I can get another
3 I can possibly get another
4 The chances of my getting another are very remote
5 If I ever get another, you can shave my legs and call me Mimsy

Enjoy Motor Movies – The Posters, and feel free to email me (paul@drivepast.com) if you want to know more, or feel I need to know more.