Ruby Mk.1 colour advertisement

[Tony Griffiths]

Lovely poster. It's a bit confusing re the name 'Ruby'. Looking at the bottom right of the poster it looks like 'Ruby' was a name to include the 2 seater, and maybe the open road tourer as well. Or you could read it the other way and think 'Ruby' did not apply to the fixed head saloon.

In the whole-range range brochure for 1934 that included the Ruby, the less-expensive two-seater with chrome radiator continued in production and was renamed the "Opal" - though oddly, other contemporary publicity literature still referred to it as the "Two-seater".
Now, for the pedant-of-the month award:
The description in the advertisement does raise an interesting question: do we call the standard version of the Ruby without bumpers and sunshine roof the "Fixed Head Saloon"? Probably not, for the previous Box saloon could also be had in that form. So, while in contemporary times it might (just possibly) not have been referred to with a "Ruby" prefix, today we'd be better off calling it the "Ruby Fixed Head Saloon" (in the whole-range brochure for 1934, under the heading "Ruby", it's not classed separately but described as a "Fixed Head" model).
As far as I can discover, the term "Open Road Tourer" in the advertisement had not been used previously; previously, any open Seven with four seats had been listed as both the "Tourer" and in some (but not all) catalogues from the 1933 to 1934 era, as the "4-Seat Tourer". It was only upon the introduction of the Ruby that it became the more glamourous, wind-in-your-hair-seduce-the-girls "Open Road Tourer".
No doubt Mr Costigan will now start digging and find something to the contrary - he usually can!