My love affair with the Motor Car

My story is about my love of motor cars. I was inspired just after the end of W.W. 2 when I was aged five and my elder brother David, who was ten at the time, decided that he was going to build his own motor car.

He went down to the local scrap yard and managed to get an old steering wheel which he took home with him. The next task was for him to build some form of body and wheels. During the following couple of days a lot of banging and hammering could be heard from the old washhouse down the back yard, but much to my annoyance I was never allowed in to see what was going on.

Eventually David announced that his car was ready for inspection and I could play on it with him, but I was told that I could only use it if he was their also.

So the great moment arrived to see the masterpiece, and what a wonder it was too!

Made up of old wooden boxes and crates, covered with ex- army issue wartime blankets the shape looked something like a 1930’s car (which of course was the only thing around in those days). The steering wheel sticking out certainly made it look very fine to an impressionable five year old lad.

From that day on I was determined to get my own car when I was old enough

When I reached the age of sixteen I started an apprenticeship as a motor engineer and worked as many hours as I could every week so that I could save up for my beloved motor car. It was whilst I was working overtime one Saturday afternoon that a Rolls Royce pulled up outside of the garage, the exhaust pipe had broken and it was making an awful noise. The owner of the Rolls asked if he could get it fixed so I drove the vehicle into the workshop.

It was at that moment my life changed forever. So impressed was I by the sheer luxury of this motor car, that I again experienced exactly the same feeling that I had all those years ago upon seeing my brothers home made “car”.

I was now determined that I wasn’t going to have a car, I was going to have a Rolls Royce, something that, due to changed circumstances, was going to evade me for the next 24 years.

Thereafter, every time I went to London, the trip would have been incomplete had I not gone to Berkley Square. The showroom of London Rolls Royce dealer Jack Barclay was, and still is there, and I would peer with my nose to the window looking at the fine vehicles inside, and dream of owning one myself some day.

My changed circumstances came about due to my meeting a young lady called Grete.
I was so madly in love with her, and determined that she was not going to get away from me that I married her.



A few years later we had two children and bought an old house that needed doing up, so any immediate chance of my much sought after Rolls Royce vanished, but my dreams didn't. I was still determined that one day my ambition would somehow be achieved, even though I currently only had an old Morris Minor that I had paid £4 for as a non-runner.

All my family and friends knew of my great desire to own my Rolls Royce but I was constantly being told that this was not for the likes of me and was just the preserve of the wealthy… I knew otherwise!

The years rolled by, the children grew bigger and so did the bills, my tiny bank balance vanished, but not my ambitions.

By 1982 I reached 39 years of age and I had a really boring office job at a local factory. At that time industry in the UK was going through a period of profound change, and unemployment was rising rapidly. The firm that I worked for was no exception so I volunteered to take a redundancy package (I considered this to be a better option to being told to go)

My total deal gave me £6000 severance pay, more money than I had ever seen in my life and not a small amount at that time, though hardly a Kings ransom. Armed with this “small fortune” I made the decision to put this towards purchasing my first Rolls Royce and started an exclusive chauffeur driven car hire service which I called “Ultimate Car Hire” – a lifelong dream had finally been realised.

In those days, to hire a Rolls Royce was quite an unusual experience, unless it was black and it took you in a coffin on your last ride, in which case you certainly didn’t get the chance enjoy the trip.

Offering the general public the chance to have a day out in a Rolls Royce was unique in 1982, and they just loved it. Sometimes it was a surprise for a wife or girl friend to have a day out in luxury, othertimes it might be a day at the races or a wedding.

One of the most unusual requests I had was simply to leave a Rolls Royce parked in a customers drive for an afternoon to impress a neighbour. (How sad can some folks get?)

Over the years I have chauffeured many celebrities all over the UK, also top business people and the occasional General. On one occasion I was chauffeuring a Queen Elizabeth look-alike, she had a “diamond” tiara on her head and really looked the part. Everytime we stopped at traffic lights etc folks were pointing at her and flashing away with their cameras, it was a lot of fun on occasions, but hard work in the main.

If anyone ever tells you that running your own business is easy, don’t believe them. You need to give it a 100% commitment, and that is what I did. During the next sixteen years I hardly ever took a single day off work, but I built up the business into a fleet of 52 vehicles which included stretched Cadillacs, Mercedes, Daimlers, Jaguars and vintage style motor cars.

Whenever I went back to the Rolls Royce showrooms I was always welcomed in, a far cry from those distant days of having to stand in the rain peering through the windows.

My greatest moment came when I purchased a Rolls Royce Cornice Convertible. My ultimate motor car had finally arrived!