The 1970s were a weird time. I say this as someone who began to exist just after the decade started, so I was there, if not particularly alert, for most of it. The ’70s had a sort of weird affectation for a certain kind of velour-slathered formality, a sort of peculiar vision of “class” that involved lots of brown and ochre and booze and thick fabrics and the concept of lounging and probably a good amount of cocaine. Old staples of leisure class sartorial (I never remember that damn word and it was like pulling teeth to drag it out of my brain just now) elegance like smoking jackets regained some popularity, which is the only justification I can think of for why this 1971 Chevy Sportvan Service Manual looks like it does.
[UPDATE: Many are pointing out, likely correctly, that this is actually a drawing of a man in an old-school set of mechanic’s overalls, maybe sort of like these here. Thats probably right. But that tie! And the hair and the languid look! I still prefer my fantasy of a smoking jacket.]
I love that ’70s sketchy art style, and that showed up on all sorts of advertising and on service manuals and owner’s manuals and whatever. That’s not the surprising thing here.
The surprising thing is what the illustrator of this service manual cover chose to have the guy on the cover wearing:
Do we need to zoom in? We may as well. COMPUTER! Zoom and enhance, sectors 2 through 15!
Yeah, that’s a smoking jacket. And a tie. The ideal choice of attire to wear when reaching down into that stubby hood to try and fix the belt tensioner on your 307 V8, right? Seriously, though, what the hell is going on here? Look at that guy – the carefully combed and oiled hair, the oddly calm expression suggesting a certain sort of aloof ennui, that arm elbow-deep in the Chevy’s business – he kind of reminds me of this guy:
That smoking jacket, though, that’s the punctum here. I’m just baffled. I did end up learning a bit about smoking jackets because of all this, though. It seems they’re sort of a strange side-effect of the Crimean War, which popularized smoking Turkish tobacco in the 1850s in Britain. In order to protect a gentleman’s fancy clothes from smelling like tobacco smoke or getting ash all over them, a protective and comfortable outer garment became popular: the smoking jacket.
These were generally worn around the house, kind of like a bathrobe, as one smoked and sat in a big leather armchair, drinking port and reading a newspaper, getting more and more drunk, probably ending with passing out with the society pages of The Telegraph and Courier laying over your face.
It’s not like the van itself was particularly smoking-jacket-coded; these things were for families or young, horny dudes or plumbers or Boy Scout troop transport or things like that; enjoying port and Turkish tobacco I think would be far eclipsed by the enjoyment of Coors and boning by the average ’70s Sportvan driver.
So I’m pretty baffled by the inclusion of Mssr.Classington up there, jamming his fancy smoking jacket sleeves into that greasy engine bay. What was Chevy trying to convey here, exactly? That changing your own plugs in your van was a hallmark of the Good Life?
You know what? I’m good with that.
Don’t knock it until you’ve tried it.
Giving me flashbacks of when I managed a Walmart auto center in the late 90s when a tie was required. After ruining an entire wardrobe I just grabbed a spare uni from the Cintas closet of one of my many deadbeat techs that never showed up. Couldn’t blame them at $6/hr back then.
I had roommate who was a raging pothead (I was as well but he took it to a whole new level). He would come home from his office job for lunch, put on his smoking cap and jacket, blaze a few gigantic spliffs, and head right back to the office.
I have no clue how he did it.
I have a really bad habit of wearing my work clothes straight into the garage, to work on my Chevrolet. Let me tell you, it is NOT the right choice of attire.
Some square in Detroit heard a lot of the owners would lounge in the back, smoking, and something got lost in translation.
Wonder if any of the other olds here remember this.
Back in the early 1960s a lot of service advisors at dealerships would wear these.
I think it was an attempt to convince the public that there were actually professionals taking care of your car.
Sigh. Hand up.
I have wrenched in a suit and tie far too many times to be judgemental of someone’s attire, but like others have commented, those look like mechanic overalls. When I was a kid I used to borrow a set my dad had that looked almost identical, though at that point I wasn’t yet mature enough to combine them with a dress shirt and tie.
Can’t believe no one else has posted James May’s Man Lab work overalls fashion show. Here’s a clip but the whole episode is funny:
https://youtu.be/W6AjvnhH8qc?si=G2qT8QsN7g5q52V_
Man Lab is excellent. Peak James May.
That’s a good choice, but I think ‘The Reassembler’ is peaker May.
There’s definitely a case to be made for “Reassembler” as peak May, in the sense that he freely admits while filming that he’s not attempting to be entertaining whatsoever and if you’re looking to be amused you may as well sod off.
That looks like something you would see from 50’s or early 60’s TV shows. Ward Cleaver relaxing in the evening on the couch in his still perfectly pressed suit. When I have the need to wear a suit my one and only goal when I get home is to take that dang thing off.
I am perfectly happy that the only times in the past 18 years I have had to wear a suit was my in-person job interview for my current job, and my kid brother’s wedding where I was the best man. No nooses for me. I don’t even wear pants unless I am getting paid (the perks of being a snowbird).
“Pants are highly overrated.”
Peewee Herman
So is Peewee Herman. Also, slightly dead, IIRC.
I know it was released in 1981 but if you want the feel of the 1970s in a movie S.O.B. captures the 1970s vibe very well: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0083015/?ref_=vp_close
A smoking jacket is the perfect attire for every situation.
Fight me.
But the fight might ruin your smoking jacket!
Easy: swap out the smoking jacket for a fighting jacket
Ach, just switch out what you’re smoking until everyone mellows out
Fighting in a smoking jacket is a time honored tradition!
You should know that he’s wearing a Mechanic’s Tie. It stops mid-sternum and pins to the shirt so it doesn’t get caught in rotating equipment. It was part of the STP collection which also included various automotive fluids packaged in brandy snifters.
I always wear a smoking jacket w/tie while working on my car in the driveway. Ya never know when you’ll end up on a hot date at the local strip club with $9.99 steak and lobster deals….
I miss strip mall steak places.
Here is a deep dive on shop coats worn back in the day.
We have a winner! The Detroit Overall one matches 100%, right down to the contrasting collar, cuffs, and pocket trim. The Autopian detective service at its finest!
This site has a SME for literally any subject you can imagine.
Yeah, I was going to say, surely it’s a shop coat and not coveralls or smoking jacket
I’ve still got my 1970s lab coat from GM with my name embroidered on it. I’m plus 10 pounds but it still buttons ok. They were standard issue to engineers in that era and of course wearing ties was normal too. Business casual didn’t really take root until the early 90s.
When they got dirty you would drop them off at a locker room and they would go out to an industrial laundry along with the technician’s uniforms which were shirts and pants.
Anything less would be uncivilized.
This reminded me of my father in law.
He gave me his old one from when he was shop foreman for the local Ford dealer in the early 1960’s.
His was white with blue collar and cuffs.
He was close to 300 lbs, a really big guy.
I wore it all the time, but my 145 lb ass was literally lost in that thing.
My wife’s grandmother was a product of the 20s and the Depression, and a lot of ladies in that era would wrap toilet paper around their hair in the kitchen (cheap and easy) in order to protect it from smells and from oil spatter. Basically a smoking jacket for your headpiece.
1920s TP must have been strong stuff!
I never heard of that, my grandmother would sometimes tie a scarf around her hair in the kitchen, but never saw her use toilet paper
Maybe kept her church hat on once in awhile, depending on what was happening
My Granny would wrap hers in aluminum foil.
Made her look like a Conehead.
Scarf, eh?! Maybe we can toss that in the wash when we’re done.
I mean, the basin. After the 8 kids are done bathing in rapid succession 🙂
That was a wildly different time. My dad’s favorite comment when watching any documentary about a pre-war time period is “Can you imagine the smell?”
Yeah, my great grandparents raised 5 kids in South Philadelphia with one bathtub and two toilets, they had in-laws living with them for awhile, too, so that’s like 9 people
My mother was the youngest of 6 kids, all raised together in a one bedroom, one bath house, out in the middle of nowhere. I have no idea how people managed to live like that, but that was actually pretty common back in the day. Especially for poorer folks out in the countryside, away from the major cities.
Are you sure this wasn’t taken from a Playboy article titled “The Joys of Roleplaying”?
“My van just broke down and I was hoping a big, STRONG man would come along and…look under the hood!”
The Hugh Hefner Swinging School of Auto Mechanics where every grad receives a commemorative Playboy Bunny logo air freshener to impress the ladies.
I ALWAYS wear my smoking jacket while working on my vehicles. It goes well with the smoking heaps I’m wrenching on.
Especially appropriate for diagnosing faults in Lucas electrical systems.
I didn’t start by wearing a smoking jacket, but it certainly started smoking before I was done.
He appears to be gazing dreamily and/or lustily upon the magnificent twin-pot brake master cylinder. Non-assisted, of course – vacuum-operated brake boosters were for lesser men.
Ii believe that is that Raffish 1930s throwback homeschooled charmer who works for the Greeters Guild – Troy Hawke.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bDxTJnkOa60&t=57s
You should have also pointed out that since it’s not the 80s, it can’t be a lab coat (as was the style at that advertising time).
My “car repair clothes” are whatever I happen to be wearing when I start. Maybe it’s my office clothes? A polo and khakis? Maybe it’s sweatpants? I get focused on the task at hand and don’t think about changing.
Ooo, no, I can’t do that. I have old ratty jeans, tees, and sweatshirts just for wrenching, and sometimes I change several times a day for a large project (like, I need to wait for the JB Weld to set or the Kroil to work itself in, so I’ll change back into regular clothes so I can hang out in my house without making it smell like JB Weld or Kroil.)
JB Weld-scented air fresheners. Now there’s a business idea!
Don’t steal my idea! Patent pending.
Mmm, that lovely aroma when you knead it together. I’m sure that would sell in very high numbers.
My Autopian “Lumiere Rouge” shirt is my official wrenching shirt. I have an oil stained coverall that used to be white over it while I’m doing things.
Yeah, sorry Torch, those are coveralls, not a smoking jacket. The tie is a nice touch, though.
I definitely associate those vans with a heavy odor of cigarette smoke, though, so I guess given the history, I wish I’d had a smoking jacket to wear when I was trapped in them as a kid.
I also think it’s the sort of coverall with a two-tone darker collar, similar to what Latka Gravis wore on Taxi.
As for the tie, well, in those days a man without a tie was like a woman without high heels.
As for the tie, well, in those days a man without a tie was like a woman without high heels.
A dirty damn hippie.
Plus, anti-American Commie Pinko or something.
Yeah. I’m getting real “Love Bug” “Team Douglas” vibes here. You’d think a beetle lover of Toch’s age could tell the distinction.
I’m pretty sure that is a set of old-school mechanic’s coveralls. Can’t explain the tie, though.
People, usually in management roles, used to wear ties and dress shirts underneath coveralls in professional environments, like engineering departments at automakers or other manufacturers
I’m sorry to disagree with you, but I believe he’s wearing his formal overalls with a shirt and tie. A smoking jacket traditionally has a shawl collar, not a notched lapel collar. It is possible the artist was a phillistine who didn’t know the difference.
Ohh it could be.But i prefer my fantasy.
“…a sort of peculiar vision of “class” that involved lots of brown and ochre and booze and thick fabrics and the concept of lounging…”
I like to think of this as the Hugh Hefner era of relaxation. Very much a ‘I read it for the articles’ period.
Come for the tastefully naked ladies, stay for the Tom Wolfe essay!
Complete with exclamation point, just as Tom would have wanted!