1981: Ska Musicians Tear Up London in Vintage GM Iron

UPDATE: Terry Hall, singer in The Specials, died last week, and in remembrance, here’s a classic post which featured one of the band’s videos. He starts singing at 1:38.

During the late 1970s and early 1980s, times were hard in Britain; labor strife, violent racism and an economy in relentless decline made life rough but also inspired some great music. Dismayed by the riots in Bristol and Brixton in 1980-1981, The Specials released their biggest hit, Ghost Town, in the summer of 1981. The video for this song -- which came out a bit early to be seen much on the soon-to-be incredibly influential MTV -- shows all seven members of the band stuffed into a 1961 Vauxhall Cresta, the bass player at the wheel as the car careens through deserted, trash-strewn patches of London's East End.

The luxurious 1957-1962 Cresta shows quite a bit of influence from Vauxhall's cousins from the American side of the GM family, Buick and Oldsmobile, with its wraparound glass and tailfins. It was a popular car among Britons who appreciated 1950s fashion and culture, e.g., plenty of musicians who came up during the 1970s. Here's a British cigar ad from the 1980s showing a couple of primates in a customized Cresta having their car stripped by some distant relatives in a wild-animal park.