"Since I was very young, I have always had a soft spot for the underdog and the eccentric; for the rebels who have taken a different path and are usually misunderstood or just ignored.

"The world is not kind to such people, and tends to see them as outcasts. The motor industry, like my own industry, of watchmaking, is no exception. And that’s truer than ever today.

"I am a car addict. I always have been. Since the age of four, I’ve scribbled car designs on any bit of paper I find lying around – right up to the age of eighteen,  at which point I hoped to become a car designer. But life decided differently and I am extremely happy that it guided me in a different direction: watchmaking. There is virtually no more art remaining in car design today; the bean-counters, marketers and wind tunnels have made sure of that. But it was not always this way. If you go back just 40 or 50 years, car creators were as much artists as engineers. This wasn’t true only of supercars, but of every car you could drive – although it wasn’t seen in that way, back then. A Ford Anglia, a Hillman Imp, a Fiat 600 Multipla, an Austin-Healey Frogeye or an Isetta could easily be featured in a design museum today – and each one brings a huge grin to the face of onlookers, when it hurtles along the street.

"I have selected just a few wonderful examples of cars I found in the Classic Driver Market. These are cars from the 1950s to the 1970s, and they won’t require you to sell your house, or rob a bank. As pieces of mechanical art, they will – over time – be seen as the icons they have always deserved to be."