Next came the adverts with the so called Brabham convertible LNW 860F. With the Brabham kits being sold at this time and just the name inspired the racing driver in everyone, so the publicity was to use the brand name of Brabham to help sales. These adverts were definitely not OPF dressed up, but could well be another one of the white SL90 cars. DLVA do not recognize LNW, but that doesn’t make it a definite 100% ringer.

The strange thing with the Brabham convertible in all its pictures is that two sections of the Brabham stripe are missing from both sides of the car. This is the small section by the Viva script badge on the front wing and the section continuing along the door. Now my theory would be that the front half of the car could get away with not being re-sprayed after conversion, if nothing was scratched. But the small section of stripe missing on the front wing negates this idea.

I know for a fact that both Viva GT convertibles were re-sprayed entirely as one lost its black bonnet and the other changed its black bonnet from matt to gloss. Early pictures of URR show that it also has been totally re-sprayed. It only takes a set of stripes and people instantly think it’s a genuine Brabham, which even today is a reasonably easy task to complete. So my theory still stands that the Brabham Viva convertible was made up with stripes just for the photo shoot. The sections of stripes on the car would have been bad enough to fit so hence I’d imagine they gave up with the smaller bits, assuming no one would even notice. That was back when Viva anoraks didn’t exist! Also pictures do not exist to my knowledge of the car with its bonnet open. This would have proved it one way or another.

With both these cars on adverts, the now Sole British and Main Concessionaire for the HB convertible were Wallace-Arnold Sales and Service Ltd of Hunslet Road, Leeds. So now you went through Wallace Arnold to get your new Viva SL90 converted into a convertible. One theory I had at one time was that say 6 x SL90s were converted as a batch, but of the ones surviving none relate to one another, chassis wise or registration wise. I now believe it was more likely that your local Vauxhall Dealer got the car done for you either via Wallace Arnold or direct with Crayfords. Neither Crayfords nor Wallace Arnold have any paperwork ascertaining to the numbers or even registrations of cars converted. Hence I feel it was rather a piece-meal affair as to the creation of Viva HB convertibles.