Story by Gérard Demeuzois
Photography by Thomas Behuret

“What is that guy doing?!” asks one of the girls. She is pointing at a yellow car spinning and sliding around the car park, the tachometer bouncing around in the red end of the gauge. The car suddenly comes to a stop following one last staccato yelp from the screeching, smoking tires. A young man with curly hair jumps out of the car. “Oh, that guy? That’s Gérard!”

I have been in the car business practically since the day I was born. In 1955 my father had set up a garage, and I was elbow-deep from the get-go—you can see me in the black & white photograph included above, posing, but with a genuine smile, while in the process of fixing the engine of a Morris 1300. Fast forward to 1969, and I have saved just enough money to buy a kit car for my 20th birthday. It was a Méan Sonora: tubular chassis,