This film is part of Free

Frinton Flyer

Ted Hammond, an amateur filmmaker from Essex filmed this travelogue, but it’s not clear whether the car or the driver is the Frinton Flyer!

Amateur film 1970 2 mins

From the collection of:

Logo for East Anglian Film Archive

Overview

A frantic, speeded-up journey in a red Vauxhall Victor F-type, registration B90 F. The unidentified gentleman driver, presumably the filmmaker, hurries from the main Post Office in the High Street at Clacton-on-Sea, jumps in the car and heads north into Holland Road, through Holland-on-Sea to the Frinton Road, onwards to Kirby Cross and eventually to Glebe Way in Frinton-on-Sea, Essex. On reaching his destination, he parks in the drive and hurries indoors.

Vauxhall produced over 390,000 Victor cars between 1957 and 1976. It was a popular family-sized four-door saloon which became a huge success for the company with exports to all corners of the globe. The first version, branded the F series, offered an American-style curved windscreen and rear window, with addiitonal ‘imported’ features, including the chromed front bumper design and sloping windscreen pillars. The exhaust pipe was concealed in the rear bumper detailing, visible below the offside lamp cluster towards the end of the film. The driving sequence of the film is shot at a slow frame rate, perhaps 6 or 8 frames-per-second, so that when projected at 24 frames-per-second the action is speeded up.