Vanguard

Vanguard (pronounced van-gahrd)

(1) The foremost division or the front part of an army; advance guard; van.

(2) The forefront in any movement, field, activity or the like.

(3) The leaders of any intellectual or political movement.

(4) In rocketry, a US three-stage, satellite-launching rocket, the first two stages powered by liquid-propellant engines and the third by a solid-propellant engine (initial capital letter).

1480–1490: Replacing the earlier form van(d)gard(e), from the Middle French avangarde, variant of avant-garde, the construct being avant- (to the fore; in front; advance) + -garde (guard).  The Old French avant was from the Late Latin abante (before, in front of) (compare the Classical Latin ante (before, in front of)), the construct being ab- (of, from) + ante (before).  The Old French guarde was from the verb guarder (or (but much less likely) directly from Frankish warda), from the Frankish wardōn (to protect). It was related to the Italian guardia & the Spanish guarda; cognate with the English ward.  The communist revolutionary sense is recorded from 1928 and appears to have been used to describe "front part of an army or other advancing group” from circa 1500 which was truncated to “van” a hundred years later but this use is archaic (although the phrase "in the van" does occasionally appear) and all other instances of "van" are etymologically unrelated.  Vanguard & vanguardism are nouns; the noun plural is vanguards.

The last battleship launched

One of a dozen-odd Royal Navy vessels to bear the name since 1586, HMS Vanguard was a fast battleship built during World War II (1939-1945) but not commissioned until after the end of hostilities.  The last battleship launched by any nation, she was soon seen as an expensive anachronism in the age of submarines and aircraft carriers but the admirals liked the fine silhouette she cut against the horizon so Vanguard was retained as the Royal Navy’s flagship for almost a decade.  Reality finally bit in 1955, the Admiralty announcing the ship would be put into reserve upon completion of a refit and in 1959 Vanguard was sold for scrap, broken up between 1960-1962.  During this process, a six-inch (150mm) thick section of steel plate, cast before 1945 and therefore uncontaminated by radionuclides from the early A-bomb detonations, was removed to be used for shielding at the Radiobiological Research Laboratory (RRL).  The current HMS Vanguard is a nuclear powered and armed ballistic missile submarine, lending its name to the Vanguard class submarines which carry the UK’s independent nuclear deterrent.  Introduced during the 1990s, they’re scheduled to be replaced by the Dreadnought-class sometime in the 2030s.

The Standard Vanguard

Standard had a history dating from 1903 and were one of the pioneers of the early industry, surviving for six decades the periodic economic turbulence which beset the twentieth century while literally thousands of others succumbed.  In this the company was assisted by their profitable tractor business which provided a reliable cash-flow even at times when the market for cars was depressed and the first Jaguars were powered by Standard engines (the SS designation used for their early models an abbreviation of “Standard Swallow”).  It is however a little misleading to suggest the early Triumph TR sports cars (TR2-TR3-TR4; 1953-1967) were powered by a “tractor engine”, the power-unit always designed with both tractor and passenger car use in mind.

The Standard Vanguard was produced between 1947-1963 and was emblematic of the approach taken by some UK manufacturers in the early post-war years when the country’s precarious financial state was thought to necessitate an approach whereby the allocation of resources was based on a company’s ability to produce commodities for export which would generate an income in foreign exchange, something vital both for servicing debts and reconstruction.  Remarkably,  Standard apparently felt compelled to seek the approval of the Admiralty to use the Vanguard name, something presumably prompted more by a residual reverence for the senior service than any concern their car might be confused with a battleship.  Standard’s approach to styling typified the improvisation of the era, the chief designer sitting with pad and pencil outside the US Embassy in London, sketching the newest American cars as they arrived.  That meant the Vanguard certainly looked new and certainly wasn’t obviously a recycled pre-war design as were so many of its competitors but the translation of the US styling motifs to smaller vehicles wasn’t wholly successful and like many such interpretations, was fundamentally ill-proportioned.  Of greater significance however was that the US cars observed to provide inspiration were actually designs from 1939-1941 recycled for use when civilian production resumed in 1945 and by then, Detroit was already embarked on a new generation which would embrace the lines of modernism and as they were released in 1948-1949 the dated look of the Vanguard became obvious.

Much change, little progress, the Standard Vanguard, 1947-1963.

However, the economic realities of post-war UK manufacturing were such that it wasn’t re-styled until 1953, again by borrowing heavily from US ideas, thereby replicating the problem.  Increasingly antiquated, the Vanguard continued to be updated and it retained some appeal both in the UK and throughout the British Empire because it was relatively roomy, robust and easy to maintain.  Additionally, because it retained a separate chassis until 1955, it was a flexible platform with which to work and in various places there were station wagons, delivery vans & pick-ups offered while on the continent, one coach-builder even had a cabriolet version on their books.  Despite bringing in the Italians to make it more appealing, by 1963 the Vanguard was obviously a relic and wasn’t replaced when production that year ceased.  Also retired (except in India where it live on until 1988) was the Standard name, the company subsequently using the Triumph badge on all its products.  Standard had in 1945 absorbed Triumph and the latter flourished until it was one of many operations doomed by a combination of the flawed macro-economic model adopted by the Labour governments and the 1960s & 1970s and the extraordinary managerial ineptness of the British Leyland conglomerate.