An Estate Car Named Desire: A Life on the Road by Martin Gurdon, is a delightful collection of short memories of various cars and motoring folk. Or at least that is how the publisher describes it. I would say it is an amusing trip in a series of cars all connected by personality. The personality of the owners, the drivers, the passengers, and of course, the cars themselves. The personality of one of those cars was strong enough to be used in a video on “How to Irritate People”.
Even as a toddler, Martin Gurdon was obsessed with cars. Before he could read or write he could distinguish a vehicle passing in the street from the purr of its engine. His first car – not strictly legally – was as a fifteen-year-old, parked round the corner from his boarding school, and driven up to London when bunking off. At one time or another he has owned or driven most of the truly dreadful, but often bizarrely loved cars that were produced by British Leyland Corporation, the conglomeration that cemented the death of the indigenous British car industry. Amongst them a succession of Morris Marinas, often kept running by cannibalized wrecks found in junk yards. But he always hankered after that thing of beauty his father once owned, a 1950s Bristol 401. Perhaps only naturally, his ambition was always to become a motoring journalist, despite it seeming questionable anyone would be insane enough to offer him a job. He’s never actually owned a Reliant Robin, but he has almost been killed by one…
Title: An Estate Car Named Desire: A Life on the Road
Author: Martin Gurdon
Publisher: Gerald Duckworth & Co Ltd (May 5, 2016)
ISBN-10: 0715650351
ISBN-13: 978-0715650356
Cost: $10.44 / £12.00
Michael Carnell is the editor and founder of the Just British Online Motoring Magazine. As a lifelong British car enthusiast, he has owned or driven British cars of all ages from Austins and MGs to Jaguars and Triumphs. He currently owns a 1966 Vanden Plas Princess 1100 and a 1977 MGB. But there is always room for more - no matter what his wife says.
