THE ALL-BRITISH MARENDAZ SPECIAL: THE MAN, THE CARS AND THE AEROPLANES
Graham Skillen
Published 2018 by Fonthill. Reviewer’s own copy
ISBN 978-1-78155-702-0
Review by Mark Holman
Marendaz was one of those small-scale British manufacturers, like Squire and Atalanta, that sprang up between the two World Wars. Its total production between 1927 and 1936 was under 100 cars. Surprisingly, Alfred and Aileen Moss, Stirling’s parents, owned four of them, and one of those four is housed in the Southward Car Museum!
Captain Marcus Marendaz flew a small number of combat missions in World War I. He first dabbled in car making via the Marseal and then began making his self-named cars with motors sourced from Anzani and the like. The ‘All-british’ part of the title came about because foreign-sounding names were still regarded with some suspicion by the British post–world War I: it’s actually a Portuguese surname.
The book, written by a current Marendaz owner, follows the trials and tribulations of developing, funding, and marketing a specialist sporting car in the economically difficult 1930s. Many of the cars were attractive and sporting in looks and performance. They had some small successes in reliability trials and at Brooklands. A few overseas events were contested too; unfortunately, the captain crashed on the first corner of the 1928 German Grand Prix.
It was a hand-to-mouth existence, though, and life cannot have been much fun for the small workforce; by all accounts, Marendaz was a difficult and unappreciative employer who did not pay well.
After the factory closed, Marendaz tried to develop his own line of light aircraft without much success, although his flying school seems to have done well for a while. He became more difficult and thin-skinned in later life, as the author demonstrates through examples of copious correspondence with individuals and magazines that Marendaz regarded as critical of him or his achievements. There was one instance, though, where his complaints seem to have been justified. The British authorities had him interned for four months in 1940 on a very flimsy case of photographing military secrets, which turned out to be an obsolete aircraft on an airfield that Marendaz owned! After the war, he spent a few unhappy years in South Africa, where he continued to have run-ins with authority. Marendaz later returned to England where he seemed to live in some comfort and with enough leisure to leap into print at the slightest provocation!
A medium-sized softcover book with 192 pages, this is a fascinating insight into a range of cars and their intriguing maker, both of which deserve their places in motoring history.