WHILE SOME AUTOMOTIVE INDUSTRY 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, Rolls-Royce, Volkswagen and McLaren (on the F1 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 Parry-Jones 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 magazine.
