In 1948, AMAG exhibited the Standard Vanguard at the Geneva Motor Show, which was the British brand’s first new model that did not have any connection to the pre-war models. The Vanguard had a Ponton design, which was highly modern at the time. Within an extremely short period of time, over 1000 orders were made, none of which could be delivered.
Production problems interfered with quick delivery, and as the first vehicles became available a year later, they were plagued by numerous defects. Haefner was thus able to successfully persuade the British that Swiss assembly would be sensible. From 1949 onward, AMAG received vehicle kits that were completely assembled at the newly opened “Automontage Schinznach AG”, allowing AMAG to offer a qualitatively better model than the original.
The preparatory phase, however, was rocky. For instance, the factory in Coventry made wrong deliveries of everything that could possibly be wrongly delivered. AMAG employees remedied this by checking the boxes in which the assembly parts were packed at the British factory.
Delivery reliability from Detroit at the beginning of the 1950s was very poor. People were thus glad that more than 500 Standard Vanguards could be built to bridge the gap and ensure capacity utilisation.
