WHILE SOME AUTOMOTIVE INDUSTRY W figures have a celebrity beyond the inner circles of the car business, others attain high levels of seniority without the general public being so aware of their names.
Steve Saxty has worked in design engineering and marketing at Ford, was at Mazda for the launch of the MX-5 in the UK, enjoyed a stint in sales at Porsche GB, ran his own automotive consultancy with clients including Lotus, RollsRoyce, Volkswagen and McLaren (on the Fl project), produced global marketing strategies for the likes of Nissan while employed by other large consultancies, and was global brand communications director for Jaguar. But it was a handful of books on Ford, some written while confined to barracks - well, his New York apartment - during Covid lockdowns, that really brought Saxty to the public's attention.
Not that he's a blinkered Ford enthusiast. "I think Ford had a golden moment in the 1970s and '80s, and they had some of the world's finest designers working there," he says. "And during the Richard ParryJones era they changed vehicle dynamics forever.'
However, it's Saxty's early backstory - not to mention the fact that the only car he now owns is a Capri Injection Special with a Turbo Technics conversion from new - that really helps explain why Ford was an inevitable topic for his venture into book writing: 'I grew up in Essex, quite close to Ford's R&D track at Dunton. As a young lad I was more interested in planes than cars and used to traipse to the local library every Thursday to read the latest issue of Flight magazine.
'Then in the early 1970s I spent a month in Canada with a relative. There were all these huge American cars floating around and mutated versions of cars I recognised from back home but with different bumpers, and I became fixated. So afterwards I started to go to the library on a Wednesday to read the motoring magazines and soon realised I'd switched my allegiance to four wheels.
هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة December 2022 من Evo UK.
ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 9,000 مجلة وصحيفة.
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هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة December 2022 من Evo UK.
ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 9,000 مجلة وصحيفة.
بالفعل مشترك? تسجيل الدخول
BEST BUYS BMW M CARS
THE PERFORMANCE CAR LANDSCAPE WOULD HAVE looked very different over the last five decades without BMW. Its M division, founded in 1972, has produced some of the best driver’s cars ever to hit the road, and in the process has provided a stream of benchmark models for its rivals to chase. In recent years, stricter emissions regulations, downsizing and electrification have seen some of those rival cars falter, yet by and large BMW’s M machines have remained strong. In fact, some rank among the greatest the department has made think of the eCoty-winning M2 CS and M5 CS while others are the only options worth recommending in their respective segments. Price tags have risen with performance, however, putting those latest offerings out of reach for many, but the marque’s popularity means there are numerous earlier M models available on the second-hand market for far more attainable figures. Here are four of our favourites.
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