The creators of Yellow Submarine take on the world of automotive design in this clever 1965 film from Ford of Britain.

We can thank Ford of Britain for this sly and irreverent 1965 film about the role of the automobile in society. The full title, The Ever-Changing Motor Car: Being an Enquiry into Motor Car Fashion, is nearly as long as the movie itself, which runs barely ten minutes. The directors are none other than Alan Ball and George Dunning, who created the Beatles’ Yellow Submarine only a few years later in 1968, and here we can see much of the same zaniness at work.

It’s fun to see what motorists in general, and people in Britain in particular, were thinking about the automobile in 1965. Then as now, cars were consumer statements about style, taste, and status—fashion, in other words—and from some angles, their role as transportation devices was  almost secondary. The automakers, of course, figured all this out rather early in the game, and it’s refreshing to see Ford’s British division address the matter with such humor and candor. Video below.