In an effort that took him five years and over 500 pages, Masterton motorcar enthusiast Roger Gardner has just finished his book, Ford Ahead: A History of The Colonial Motor Company.
Mr Gardner has been involved with the Ford Motor Company for 44 years and managed Fagan's Motors in Dixon Street
for 26 years.
The Colonial Motor Company was the original Ford distributor and its history is as expansive as the breadth of Ford's 33 subsidiaries scattered around the country. Mr Gardner decided to set the book out in two sections, the first section is a chronological history of the company and the second section documents the history of the main trading subsidiaries.
Mr Gardner says Ford Ahead is more than the history of the Colonial Motor Company, it is also the social and economic story of the development of mechanised transport in New Zealand.
He says part of the book relates to Masterton's forebears and the coach building industry.
Mr Gardner was born in Hawera in 1937 and grew up in Wanganui. In 1960 he started working for Colonial Motor Company in Wellington. In 1973 he was appointed manager of Fagan Motors, Masterton, and stayed there until he retired in 1999.
The Colonial Motor Company is a publicly listed company and is responsible for over 50 per cent of Ford's retail output. Mr Gardner says the book should appeal to anyone interested in motoring history and particularly staff and people involved with the company.
"If you don't know your history, you don't know where you are going," he says.
The 1.8kg volume totals 544 pages, with nearly a thousand photographs. 1500 copies of the book have been produced, and 500 have already been sold. It is on sale for $59.95.
Picture: Roger Gardner fords ahead with his new book about the history of The Colonial Motor Company. The Model A Ford truck in the background was a trusted workhorse of its era.
