Auto <

There’s no denying the profound cultural influence cars, motorbikes and all forms of powered transport have had for the majority of the last century and this one.

The car in particular, has been for me far more than just a means to get to work, collect the shopping or pick up the kids from school. It has always been a symbol of freedom, an essential part and facilitator of a need to escape and sometimes simply just drive. Trucking across Botswana, Delhi to Kashmir by train and car, six weeks on the road from New York to Buenos Aires sometimes in the back of a truck or on a chicken bus, my old regular drive from London to Faro, the UK to Palermo in my first bay window VW, so many of my most memorable life experiences have involved a road trip of some sort, whether by train, car or motorbike.

My first own car was, unsurprisingly, not exactly representative of the sort of cars I coveted as a kid, judging by the toy boxes of die-cast scale models of Maseratis, Alfa Romeos and other Italian exotics I collected. But even if it didn’t have the flowing lines you’d normally expect from Italian design, at least it was actually Italian. It was a yellow Fiat 128, a boxy little number that looked like it had been drawn by a four year old and I imagine its design had never even been anywhere near a wind tunnel, let alone sculpted in one. Nevertheless it was cheap to insure, quite nippy for a first car, a bit growly and I loved it. Unfortunately, like a lot of first cars, it didn’t survive long and was shunted off the road and in to a ditch; a write-off. But for the most part it had been great and from the proceeds of the subsequent insurance claim, was replaced with another one, this time in a more understated and flattering metallic light blue.

Visionary car designers like Battista Farina, Harley Earl, Marcello Gandini, Flaminio Bertoni, Malcolm Sayer and arguably the greatest of them, Giorgetto Giugiaro, to name just a handful, have in my eyes created some of the most beautiful, inspiring and iconic car designs of all. A lot of that design permeated beyond just cars and influenced so many other areas of industrial design too, particularly from the 1950s onwards.

Whilst obviously now no longer the most environmentally sound form of transport in their fossil fuel burning form, I hope that the spirit of the car isn’t lost in its next but very crucial evolution.

The shots in this folio are mostly from boxes of old 35mm transparencies but with a few digital snaps thrown in.

In order: Porsche 356c x 5, my late friend John’s lovely old Citroen DS23 that his wife and I sneaked out to photograph for his birthday, my Grandfather’s Chrysler Cordoba and his Oldsmobile Cutlass, 1950s Buick, Alfa Romeo 1750 GT Veloce, MK1 Ford Escort at Goodwood, Alfa Romeo 1750 GT Veloce, Alfa 4c, Alfa Romeo 1750 GT Veloce, Chevrolet in Chiapas Mexico, the iconic Airstream bus.