06/17/2026
The 13 Shocking Facts About the 1959 Ford Anglia 105E โ The Weirdest Car Britain Ever Built
Picture this. It is October 1959, and the Earls Court Motor Show in London is buzzing with excitement. Rock and roll is playing on every radio station across the country. The space race has just begun between global superpowers, and Americaโs automotive tail fins have reached their absolute aesthetic peak.
Britainโs local automakers, meanwhile, are still churning out conservative, boxy little cars that look like they belong in the mid-1940s. The post-war landscape has kept the United Kingdom under a cloud of functional austerity for a long time. Vehicles are meant to be utilitarian tools rather than artistic expressions of freedom and modern progress.
Then Ford of Britain throws open the curtain on something completely different at its massive exhibition booth. A small British economy car stands center stage, looking like it drove straight out of a design studio in Detroit. The bustling crowd stops dead in its tracks as people push forward to get a closer look.
Flashbulbs explode continuously, casting harsh light over a body shape that defies every convention of European styling. This is the brand-new Ford Anglia 105E, and it is about to change the automotive world forever. At the exact same show, the British Motor Corporation unveils the revolutionary, front-wheel-drive Mini.
Over in another exhibition hall, Triumph shows off the crisp, straight-lined Herald, adding to the tension. Yet, it is the radical new Anglia that stops everyday people in their tracks with its bizarre features. Its backwards-slanting rear window and those unmistakable sharp tail fins are unlike anything seen before.
Nobody in Britain has ever witnessed a mass-market family vehicle quite like this quirky machine. This was not just another affordable car meant to get commuters to work on rainy mornings. It was a bold artistic statement, a massive corporate gamble, and ultimately one of the most successful British vehicles of the 1960s....
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