Oliver Winterbottom - June News Bulletin

2  June Hockwold Country Fair, Norfolk

Two Lotus displayed right by the entrance to the Hockwold Country Fair

 I introduced myself and suggested that the owners contact Richard Woollaston, regarding the Lotus Elite’s 45th anniversary. I greatly enjoyed seeing them.

4 June I depart Norfolk for my annual visit to the historic races at Dijon Prenois, France. I have been to the Grand Prix Age de L’Or six times now and make it a pleasant holiday. I love France, and the Burgundy area is a good as any!

8 June I meet up with Englishman Tony Poll, owner of a Lotus Excel, which he put on display at the Dijon track. It is part of the huge presentation by the French Light Car Club which has taken over the traditional Club Lotus France site. I've met Tony before but unfortunately could not get to speak to the club leader, Thiebolt Venisse, who bought my book here two years ago.

11 June Had dinner with John Elwin, Michelle and Pat Singleton at Le Manoir de Gavrelle, near Arras. John was a buyer at Lotus when we did the Lotus Elite and went on to work with Team Lotus. He now lives in France.

12 June I return home from France and find a very full email box. Among them was a message forwarded by Jane Woollestone at Club Lotus:

“Hi Jane,
I have been reading Oliver Winterbottom’s excellent book, A Life in Car Design, and would thoroughly recommend it to anyone interested in the design story behind the iconic cars he worked on. This is particularly interesting for me as I have a slightly odd Elite S1.
By an amazing coincidence, Mr Winterbottom has actually met my car, albeit it back in June 2004 in Brightwell Baldwin, some eight years before I bought it. I attach a photo of him with the car which you published in Issue 4 of CLN in 2004. I was wondering if Mr Winterbottom might know whether Lotus ever made bumpers for the Elite with recesses moulded in them for front and rear fog lights? Although you can see an S2 wrap-around spoiler in the photo, the car is actually an S1 that has been tweaked.”

Sadly I do not remember seeing this in 2004 (old age creeping in), and I was at TVR in the late 1970s when this work was done, so unfortunately I cannot add to the story. For further information - Join Club Lotus!

12 June I also had a nice message from Tony Poll telling me he returned to home safely in his Lotus Excel despite having frightful weather in England.

27 June I get a message sent on by Paul Shipley (see 1 May 2019) sent by a gentleman who has just bought a JCL Mamba. I have been in touch and hope to visit her in the near future. It’s wonderful to hear of an old project so long afterwards, and I am amazed at her condition; especially having been neglected for over 10 years. For me, it was a project I left in 1977 – 42 years ago. The owner says “Just an amazing looking boat – I have never seen anything like it. What's most impressive is how well the design holds up next to modern cruisers.” Well, that’s nice to hear!

The original prototype Mamba on Breydon Water, Norfolk 1977

This poor lady looks a little worse for wear in 2019

28 June Following the correspondence on the JCL Mamba (above) I am delighted to see that the ‘Google images’ for the Mamba display the A Life in Car Design book and many of the pictures from it. Although the book is directed at readers with an automotive interest, it’s great that it has also created some nautical interest!

30 June Five of us retired ex-Lotus senior management, write to a motoring journal criticising certain comments that had been written, as they have no foundation in reality. Sometimes today, writers do not research the prevailing situations in politics, finance or indeed engineering history before putting keyboard to paper.

AUTHOR PROFILE No.18: PETER GRIST

Peter Grist has written three books for Veloce, and his biography of automotive designer Virgil Exner is reprinted later this month.

Peter Grist is regarded as one of the world’s most knowledgeable figures in American automotive history circles, and, in particular, the Chrysler Corporation. With four books on the subject already published it would be easy to assume that he is a homebred American, but Peter was actually born on a council estate in West London in 1964.
     At the tender age of 16 Peter joined the Army as a Junior Leader, which is where he first learnt to drive. By the end of his tenure, over a decade later, he had progressed to HGV1 class vehicles and was a unit driving instructor. His love of 1950s music led him into buying his first classic car while based in Bicester, Oxfordshire, a 1961 Ford Consul 375 featuring 50's styling. The Consul was restored and became an award winner, and was taken to Germany on Peter's next posting. The Ford was then traded up for a 1955 Buick Century, the first of many American cars that became part of the Grist family over the years.

On leaving the Army in the early nineties, Peter moved away from London and settled his family in Southampton on the South Coast of England, purchasing his first Mopar car, a 1959 DeSoto Firesweep at the same time. This car would be the catalyst for his writing career. As with most owners of older cars, Peter wanted to join the national club for his car's marque to learn more about his kind of car, and to communicate with like-minded enthusiasts. Sadly, a club for Chrysler vehicles didn’t exist; only a hand-written fanzine from an enthusiast’s register could be found. Peter joined this register and began writing of his experiences in restoring his car, and the trips he made in it. This led to Peter taking control of the fanzine and creating The Chrysler Corporation Club UK and its monthly publication TalkFlite. With help from his wife, Peter ran the club virtually single-handed for more than a decade, honing his skills as a writer and broadening his knowledge base. This led to writing articles for high street magazines including Classic American, Old Car World and others.
     Peter was approached by a publishing company, and asked if he would consider writing a book on an American automotive subject to coincide with the launch of that company’s American office. Peter accepted and created Dodge, The Performance Cars, a hardback, black and white, book that offered a potted history of Dodge and then every performance vehicle built by Dodge over the next 50 years.
     Peter continued to write for TalkFlite and other magazines whilst training as a DoT (Department of Transport) driving instructor, which eventually became his full-time occupation. He is now an advanced driving instructor working for a Hampshire-based charity.
     His love of American cars was only just beginning and, over the years, Peter has owned a 1967 Dodge 440, a Jeep Cherokee, Dodge Neon R/T, Chrysler Voyager, Shelby Charger and a Dodge Stealth R/T amongst others. Currently in his garage at home is a WW2 Willys Jeep which he is restoring.
     On the writing side Peter has let the historical books simmer on the back burner so as to finish his first novel, Flashback, which is due to be published late 2015, but he has already started writing the history of the Chrysler Corporation’s Forward Look. Peter still lives in Southampton with his wife, Catherine, and two of his three children.

Virgil Exner – Visioneer: The official biography of Virgil M Exner, designer extraordinaire (Paperback edition) by Peter Grist is published later this month. Click here for more information about the book.

AUTHOR PROFILE No.17: NORMAN BURR

First Principles – The Official Biography of Keith Duckworth OBE is the second biography by Norman Burr to be produced by Veloce (his portrait of John Chatham, Mr Big Healey, was published in 2010), and his third motorsport work, the first being a self-published book on hillclimbing called Living with Speed, produced in 1997.

Although he has always been a passionate motoring enthusiast, it is in aviation publishing that Norman made his name. Trained as an engineer at Rolls Royce Aero Engines and Bath University, in 1973 he opted for a career in the technical press after noticing that his fellow engineering postgrads were struggling to write their theses, whereas his (on exhaust emission analysis equipment) was progressing nicely.

First competitive drive, Wiscombe Park hillclimb, 1972.

Silverstone 1974, Bentley Drivers Club meeting: long-haired novice racer with execrable taste in jeans.

Nicely sideways at Wiscombe Park hillclimb, 1975, now with wider wheels.
With the trade and technical press mostly located in London, this decision involved a reluctant move back to his native city, but, by 1978, Norman felt sufficiently established to gamble on relocating somewhere more rural, and found an editing post on a motorcycle paper in Morecambe. “It wasn't a fantastic job,” he confesses, “but the office banter was second to none and, as my first wife and I Iiked the Lancaster area, we put down roots.”

In 1982, after a couple of other posts in Manchester, and a spell writing handbooks for nuclear submarines at Barrow, Norman went freelance and began looking for a publication he could edit from home. “As luck would have it, the British Microlight Aircraft Association (BMAA) was looking for someone to edit and produce its magazine, and I got the job.” Back then, both the association and the sport were embryonic. “When I started I knew virtually nothing about small piston-engined aircraft,” he recalls, “the learning curve was practically vertical!” But he must have done something right, because he continued to edit the association's magazine – initially called Flightline and latterly Microlight Flying – for over 13 years, and still enjoys helping with its production today, 33 years later, receiving an award from the Royal Aero Club in 2013 for services to aviation publishing.

Leaving for major surgery in 1994 after many years storage and partial dismantling; the kids look on while worried owner lurks in the background, looking the other way.

Trying the car for size during David Sanderson's rebuild in 2005 – David on the left, son Tom behind.
That award was in recognition not only of his editorial work, but also his first books, Ultralight & Microlight Aircraft of the World, produced in conjunction with French journalist Alain-Yves Berger as two editions, 1983 and 1985. These quickly became – and remain – the standard reference works worldwide on microlights of that era.

Despite this heavy involvement in flying, Norman never completed his flying training. “I had every intention of gaining my licence, but quickly realised that I could not afford two expensive mechanical hobbies, and there was no way I was going to stop messing around with cars. So, as far as aviation was concerned, I became a commentator rather than a participator.”

The production requirements of the BMAA's magazine prompted him to join with two colleagues to form a small printing and publishing company, Pagefast Ltd. Contracts for other specialist magazines followed, as well as a lot of general commercial print-work – a managerial workload that left precious little time for writing. So, in 2006, wanting to get off the production treadmill, Norman left the company and reverted to freelance editing work.

Now that he was free to return to his first love, his attention turned to things automotive, in both his writing and his garage. The latter had since 1971 housed what he describes as 'my mistress,' a 1961 AC Ace 2.6, but it had remained dormant for most of those years, due to lack of time and money to complete its restoration. The year 2006 marked the car's rebirth, and it has since taken Norman all over Western Europe and Ireland, with a trip to the Arctic Circle planned for 2015.

Continental trip immediately on completion of rebuild: on the harbour at Monte Carlo …

… and keeping a microlight company in the hangar at Lagos aerodrome in Portugal.
This is not Norman’s first Ace – that honour goes to an AC-engined example that his sister wrote off in 1969, a fortnight after he bought it. “It was later rebuilt, but I was a student at the time, and in no position to tackle the job.”

“I bought my present AC a couple of years later,” he continues. “I was about to graduate and start a summer job at a resort in Colorado, so I wasn't in the market for a car, but then a friend of a housemate came to stay. She was a ‘Girl Friday’ for various media and entertainment people and, as Bill Wyman had been a recent client, she arrived complete with free tickets for the forthcoming Stones concert in Bristol. Naturally, she was made very welcome!

“Knowing that she was in a house full of engineers, she casually mentioned that another client, an American scriptwriter in Oxfordshire, was trying to sell a sportscar. When she mentioned the model, everyone's ears pricked up: they remembered my ill-fated first Ace. To learn of another in such a roundabout way was such an astonishing coincidence that I just had to see it. I offered the vendor every penny I had – £700 – but told him he would get nearer £1000 if he advertised it in Car & Driver, as it's one of just a dozen built with LHD. Then I went off to the States and forgot all about it, though I left him my father's phone number, just in case.

“A few weeks later I was sweeping the floor in the reception area when a telegram arrived from my father. It contained just four words: ‘AC purchased, start saving.’ That was 1971; I've had it ever since.

“I’m still in touch with the vendor: he told me later that Car & Driver had lost his advert. It really does feel as though the car found me.”

A third AC, a 1950 Buckland tourer in a poor state, was bought for £80 in 1976 as a restoration project. It was persuaded to run, but only just, and was sold to a Dutchman in more or less the same condition in 1998, only to be repurchased in 2014 after he died. “If I hadn’t,” Burr explains, “I’m sure it would have been scrapped. He'd used it as a donor car.” It is now finally receiving the TLC it deserves in the hands of an enthusiast in Carlisle.

Most of the other cars in Norman’s life have been unremarkable family saloons and hatchbacks, of which his three Alfas (Sud saloon, Sprint and Guilietta) stand out as high points, but he also has a soft spot for Peugeots; especially the deeply unfashionable 605 SVE. “I loved it, even though I never had all the toys working simultaneously at any point during my six-year ownership!”

The owner poses at home with the Ace in late summer 2006.

At a friend's house in central France, en route to Cannes with fiancée Jane, 2010.

Wedding Day, December 2011, holding Jane's handbag as she manoeuvres into the Ace.

At Popham Airfield around 2007, having just arranged for an old friend to have her first microlight flight.
Books by the same author:
• Ultralight & Microlight Aircraft of the World, co-written with Alain-Yves Berger, published 1983 (also published in French as Tous les ULM du Monde).
• Ultralight & Microlight Aircraft of the World Second Edition, co-written with Alain-Yves Berger, published 1985.
• Living with Speed, a partly biographical look at the speed hillclimb scene through the eyes of Roy Lane's 1996 season, published 1997.
• Mr Big Healey, official biography of racing driver John Chatham, published by Veloce, 2010.

Contributed to
• 32 Days to Beijing, travelogue by James Edmonds about a microlight flight from London to China, published 1994.
• Gertie's Day Out, travelogue by Eve Jackson about emigrating to Tanzania by microlight, published 2006.

AUTHOR PROFILE No.16: ANDY WESTLAKE

Andy Westlake is the author of three Veloce books. His latest, Off-Road Giants (volume 3), is published in December.

Since beginning his riding career in 1969 on a humble 125cc Vespa, Andy has owned over 70 machines and covered hundreds of thousands of miles over four continents. He began his working life as a photo lithographer in the print industry, but, after taking voluntary redundancy in 2000, took a bold leap into the unknown to pursue his literary talents, and is now regarded as one of the UK’s leading classic motorcycle journalists. Like his previous two volumes, Off-Road Giants Volume 3 is a compilation of profiles on former scrambles and trials stars, many of whom Andy saw in action as a small boy in the 1960s. It was a truly golden era for off-road sport, and fondly remembered by the lad, who still recalls some of those carefree summer days of his childhood …

“Twelve years my senior, my brother, Rod, took me to watch my first scramble at Bulbarrow Hill in Dorset in March 1961. At the time, little could I have realised that over 50 years later I would be reliving those magical days with some of the stars who were flying past on their bellowing four-strokes and screaming two-strokes, not more than a few yards from where we were standing.

“Living where we did on the borders of the Wessex and Southern centres meant that virtually every Sunday we went off in Rod's old ex-GPO Morris Eight van to see some of the UK’s top riders, like the Rickman and Sharp brothers, Jerry Scott, Ivor England, and Badger Goss in action. As a spectator sport in the UK, scrambling in the ’60s was probably only second to football, and thousands used to line the tracks cheering on their favourite riders, my own personal hero being Triss Sharp. Triss, who raced both a superbly-finished, Triumph-engined special and a lightweight Greeves, always rode as number 71, and I recall going back home after the first event and making a replica race plate to put on my pushbike, which rather aptly was also a Triumph.

“My dad never owned a car or a motorcycle, so, prior to Rod taking me to watch the scrambles, my vision of the big outside world had been limited to the occasional family trip to the seaside on one of the local Crown Tours coaches. Suddenly, my horizons were broadened, and early on I made up my mind that, once I was grown up, I would travel to all of these far away places on two wheels. With the racing over we used to return home with the transistor radio playing Pick of the Pops, and I vividly recall the day I first heard the Rolling Stones playing Route 66. The line 'It runs from Chicago to LA, more than two thousand miles all the way,' really landed on me, and back home I went to my bedroom to check out the start and finish of this famous road: one which, in 1998, I would be travelling along on my Moto Guzzi vee twin.

“I had to wait until 1969 before I got my own two-wheeler – a 1959 125cc Douglas Vespa from one of my dad’s workmates – but, by the end of that first summer, I'd progressed to a 1961 250cc Honda Dream, and by April the following year had passed my test and had begun to expand my riding horizons. In the winter of ’72, Rod and I started riding in trials – he on a 250cc Cheetah, and me on an elderly Greeves Scottish – and, although I soon realised I was not going to be a future works star, we had a lot of fun. By the time I'd progressed through a Cheetah and a Minarelli-engined Cotton to a MAR Ossa in 1974, I was managing to pick up the odd award or two.

“I continued to ride in trials on a Beamish Suzuki and a TL Honda for several more seasons, but it was the travelling that really lit me up, and, in 1975, I made my first trip across the channel with three friends, to the motorcycle Grand Prix at Spa in Belgium. This was on a GT 750cc Suzuki, which kickstarted a love for touring. In the last 40 years I've been lucky enough to cover thousands of miles across much of Europe, North America, North Africa and New Zealand on my faithful Guzzis.

“Working in a well-paid job gave me the money to pursue my love of bikes and travel, but the new digital age saw a major downturn in the UK’s print trade, and in 2000 I was given the opportunity to take voluntary redundancy and start a new life. Marriage to Jill saw me move to Devon, and it was thanks to her encouragement that I decided to become a full-time motorcycle journalist and author. It was one of the best decisions of my life, and today I go around with a permanent smile on my face. It’s a dream job.”

Andy Westlake
October 2014

Check out Andy's interview with BBC Radio Devon in 2008 ...

AUTHOR PROFILE No.15: JAMES HALE

James Hale is the author of seven Veloce books. His most recent is a completely revised edition of his first book, The Dune Buggy Handbook.

James Hale has been a devotee of Dune Buggies from an early age, and has driven, built, manufactured, photographed and written about them in the years since. He is the leading authority on Buggies for many British and American magazines, and his most recent features have appeared in TKC under the title ‘The Buggy Guru.’ He is also a member of the Society of Automotive Historians in Britain, and contributes to their publications.

Long before James could drive, he had a great interest in all forms of vehicles, including traction engines, veteran and vintage cars, and marketingmobiles (vehicles shaped like the product they advertise). The quality of engineering was the thing that captured his imagination, but, other than that, he had no strong opinions regarding different makes and models of vehicle.
In 1970, at the tender age of 13, the day came that changed everything. James was watching a local news programme on TV, called Scene South East, when they ran a feature on beach buggies, and showed two wildly outlandish (to a teenager) GP buggies being driven across a sandy beach somewhere in Kent. The rather fusty presented concluded the piece with the comment: “Cars on the beach; whatever next?!” For James, ‘next’ was already decided. He wanted a buggy, and wanted to know how to build a buggy as soon as possible. He started finding out more about these fun vehicles, collected magazines and requested manufacturer’s brochures, visited workshop premises to see them being made, and even got a few free rides in demonstration vehicles through sheer persistence.

James & Hustler Buggy in 1977.

James & Hustler Buggy in 1979.
Years later, having passed his driving test, James finally acquired his first car – an EPC Hustler buggy, bought for the princely sum of £250. It had an asthmatic 1200cc VW Beetle engine, 6-volt electrics, balding tyres, and tired brakes. Having got the buggy properly roadworthy, James ventured much further from home to take part in national buggy conventions (the furthest journey was from the south coast up to Middlesbrough, during which the engine grenaded itself, sending hot oily piston and crankcase bits across the road, and necessitating an engine transplant at a friend’s house en-route). At most of the events James took a Pentax camera, and this resulted in him building up an unrivalled photographic archive of the 1970s and 1980s British buggy scene. It also led to him contributing photos to magazines and publications of the day – the first being The Fun Car Explosion by Peter Filby.

James on a VW chasis in 1985.

James with a VW Van in 1986.

James & Beetle in 2004.

James became a contributor to various motoring magazines, whilst also pursuing a professional career in marketing and public relations. The launch of Volksworld magazine gave James the opportunity to produce technical features on Volkswagen maintenance and technical upgrades, and his monthly features appeared for over ten years. The concept of upgrading humble air-cooled VWs led to the writing of two books – How to modify VW Beetle suspension, brakes & chassis for high performance, and a similar one for the VW Bus. These two books are in print to this day, due to the enduring popularity of the air-cooled VW marques.

Besides the buggies and VWs, James has also researched and written the only book ever produced on marketingmobiles. This was launched at the National Motor Museum in Beaulieu in 2005, with the museum itself holding a major exhibition of promotional vehicles (called ProMotion) in 2010, opened by Lord Montague’s son, Ralph. The exhibition featured vehicles including the Outspan Orange car, the Cadbury’s Creme Egg car, the Duckhams Q car, and the Worthington’s bottle lorry.
As well as writing his original and revised editions of The Dune Buggy Handbook, which has become the bible for buggy devotees, James has also acted as a consultant on Top Gear, built promotional buggies for Coca-Cola and Liptons Iced Tea, and been interviewed in magazines and on radio in England and abroad to talk about his involvement with the buggy scene. His unique and extensive collection of toy buggies was also featured on a TV programme hosted by Sarah Greene.

James has owned a number of VW Beetles throughout his motoring career, plus a few VW Variants, a split-screen VW Bus, and a few more mundane foreign saloons. But it is the buggies that have always mattered most, and his friendship with the buggy originator, Bruce Meyers, resulted in James owning an exact replica of the Corvair-powered buggy driven by Steve McQueen in the 1968 film, The Thomas Crown Affair. Bruce Meyers also wrote the foreword for The Dune Buggy Handbook, in acknowledgement of the work James has done to document and preserve the history of his own most famous creation – the Meyers Manx buggy.

James & Bruce Meyers in California.

James & Mini Outspan Orange

MarketingMobiles book launch at Beaulieu.

GT Coca Cola Buggies.

AUTHOR PROFILE No.14: TERRY O'NEIL

Terry O'Neil has written 4 books for Veloce, with another due to be published in 2015.



Born in the town of Ware, Hertfordshire, in the latter part of 1942, Terry O’Neil’s first memory was transport related – sitting in his pram in the back garden at his grandparents’ house in Buntingford, while his mother was working in a munitions factory helping with the war effort.

When Terry’s father returned home from duty in the Middle East,

the family moved to Coventry, his father’s home town. After attending a local grammar school, Terry took up employment at a tyre distributor before moving on to work in the general sales department of the Rootes Group, based at Ryton-on-Dunsmore, near Coventry. Here he gained his first insight into the manufacture of cars, and had his first taste of public relations work: taking new cars for photographic shoots throughout the country, then working in the showroom at the Ryton factory, where he oversaw the factory visit programme for foreign guests.

After helping to conduct a dealer franchise review for the Rootes

Group, Terry moved to British Leyland, based at Longbridge, Birmingham, to help carry out a similar review for it, before being moved to Sussex to take up the position of sales area manager for the company.

A similar job soon saw Terry and his family move back to the Midlands,

to Stourbridge – and forty years later they are still living there. With the demise of British Leyland/Austin-Morris, Terry took up self employment, and in 1999 began researching what turned out to be his first book, although it was initially intended as an article for the Ferrari Owners Club ...

Terry had been fortunate enough to achieve his lifelong aim of owning

a Ferrari, and having done so joined the FOC. His interest in motor racing history led him to write articles for the club magazine, and also for the Cavallino magazine in America, so when the club secretary asked Terry for an article with a difference, he came up with the idea of looking at the Bahamas Speed Weeks.

The author with his Ferrari at Spa in the mid 90s.

With Sir Stirling Moss circa 2000.
Terry had taken on two roles for the FOC: club archivist, and classic car show organiser. The former role allowed him the scope to gather material for the archives over a number of years, and at the same time the opportunity to increase his material for the Bahamas Speed Weeks project, until it eventually snowballed into enough content for a book, which Veloce's Rod Grainger agreed to publish in 2006. A large proportion of the research and sourcing of photographs was done in the Bahamas and America, and Terry has been fortunate enough to return to the Bahamas to enjoy the Speed Week Revival meetings over the past two years.

It’s a tough job, but someone has to do it!
Since then, three further books written by Terry have been published by Veloce. Runways and Racers covered the history of the Sports Car Club of America/Strategic Air Command sports car races in the early 1950s, Motor Racing at Nassau, part of Veloce’s ‘Those were the days’ series, and Northeast American Sports Car Races 1950-59, which is the first book of an intended series covering sports car and formula racing in northeast America, mid-America, and the mid-Atlantic states.

The author signing copies of his Motor Racing at Nassau book at the Speed Week Revival Meeting 2012.

The author and Derek Bell (driving) take on the Fort Charlotte hillclimb.
A fifth book is now nearing completion, and should be published early in 2015. This title is different from Terry’s previous work, as it concentrates on the racing achievements of one particular car: the Ferrari 333 SP.

The Ferrari Club of America meeting at Laguna Seca 1994. The author poses next to a Ferrari 333 SP.
Click here to view all Veloce books by Terry O'Neil.

AUTHOR PROFILE No.13: LINDSAY PORTER

Lindsay Porter is sometimes referred to as the UK's top-selling motoring author, and he has been writing motoring books since Veloce Publishing's director, Rod Grainger, first commissioned him in 1981.

Lindsay was amoung the first to develop the photo-intensive style for

which his how-to publications are known. He currently has 5 books published by Veloce, with another due in 2015.



“My first published work was a magazine article on converting and building our house, for DIY Magazine in 1979, while my latest, a book for Veloce, is the Renewable Energy Home Handbook. In between, all of my books and articles have been on motoring, caravanning, and other related technical subjects, so, after all this time, I feel as if I’ve come full circle.

Lindsay’s Dad restored this for Lindsay's 3rd birthday. He was slightly pleased it seems.
“I was born in 1949 in the industrial West Midlands, the main centre of the British motor industry of the time. I well remember, as a small boy, hearing a bloke talking to Dad, on the shop floor at John Thompson Motor Pressings, in early 1958. The bloke had spent his life building traditional ladder-frame chassis: heavy, rigid and strong. He said to my dad, then a young accountant at the factory, 'Doug, just look at this bloody thing – it ay no good at all! Yow wouldn’t get me in one of them things!' as he shook and wobbled a newly-pressed floorpan for the yet-to-be-launched 'Frogeye' Sprite.

Half a century on, Lindsay restored his own ’59 2CV (see Lindsay's and Veloce’s 2CV Restoration Manual) and took it back to Quai André Citroën, adjacent to where it was built.
“Dad sympathised, probably thought something Scottish, and on we went to see ‘the biggest press in the world’ (as it then was), passing by badly-shielded canvas bays with their bitter smoke, unearthly, shadowy blue lights, and guttural growls of powerful arc welders at work. And my fascination with the way things were made was well under way.

“I became a school teacher in 1972. I found my time in the profession deeply rewarding, but left in the early '80s as my writing work began to take off, though I have done a little more work in the classroom in recent years, some of it voluntary. Along with rescuing a suffering dog or cat, there is nothing more satisfying than seeing a child discover they can achieve things that they previously hadn’t thought possible.

“But back to publishing: that first piece of professional writing, in 1979, explained how my wife, Shan, and I built and extended our own country house – the one we still live in today. The article was produced after encouragement from our friend, publisher and leading Jaguar authority Paul Skilleter.

“I was still teaching when we became friends with Paul and June Skilleter. I had read in Thoroughbred & Classic Cars that they had moved to a house a few miles from ours, that his E-type – externally almost identical to the one we owned at the time – had broken down locally, and that he hadn’t known who to contact for help. We swapped E-type tales, discovered a shared interest in both mechanical and domestic cats (we ‘inherited’ a wonderful Siamese called Tigger from the Skilleters when ill-health forced a rehome), and became firm friends.

“Paul encouraged me to write that first article, and must have liked what he saw, because, when he launched Practical Classics magazine, he employed me to write for them as a freelance. I was already a keen photographer, but he also taught me how to take ‘proper’ car photographs. Incidentally, Shan – who has a great eye for picture composition – has always been on hand with the camera, and quite a number of ‘my’ pictures are actually hers!

“In 1980, Paul introduced me to Rod Grainger, then Managing Editor at Haynes Publishing, and the man responsible for a number of lasting innovations there. Rod was immediately helpful and encouraging, and as a result the MGB Restoration Manual – first published in 1982, and like most of my books still in print today – became the first, heavily-illustrated, step-by-step manual of its type, guiding the reader through every stage of the technical processes, using pictures in conjunction with friendly, helpful text.

“In 1985, I launched Porter Publishing Ltd, and produced the first commercial range of classic car videos, in association with Castrol, eventually building up to over 70 titles. The printed word soon followed, and Porter Publishing was commissioned by Fiat, Perkins Engines and Halfords, among others, to produce workshop manuals, including the first all-colour ones for modern cars. At the same time, I continued to write, including books and magazine articles on caravanning and motor caravanning. I was for many years the Technical Editor at Land Rover Monthly magazine.

Before getting to Paris, an enthusiastic local – and former Citroën employee – came out unbidden in his slippers to carry out essential adjustments.
“Now in our mid-sixties and around 50 years since we first met, Shan and I still live in the house in Herefordshire that sparked off the whole thing. My greatest passions, apart from Shan, of course, are our nine (last time I looked) ‘rescue’ dogs and cats; our small patch of woodland, and the classic, compact tractor I just had to buy to go with it; my immaculate, low mileage 1989 Audi 200 Turbo Quattro Avant – oh, that engine sound! – and then there’s my involvement in the whole area of renewable energy, which is where I’d like to concentrate most of my writing from now on. We’ve got some great nieces and nephews, and, in all probability, they’ll have children, too. We owe it to them – and to everyone else’s kids of the future – to do our best to pass on a more sustainable planet than the one we’re living on now.

“I am now involved in developing publications that will deal with the practicalities of eco-energy for the home and car owner. I'm still writing books, and am extremely happy to be published by Veloce’s Publisher, Rod Grainger, once again.”
Lindsay Porter

Fortunately, all of the Porters’ rescue dogs are keen classic car
enthusiasts, too.
Click here to view all Veloce books by Lindsay Porter.