The automatic choice for car manuals
WHILE at boarding school in Kent, 12-year-old John Haynes shied away from playing rugby, opting instead for tinkering with cars.
After persuading the housemaster to let him skip sport altogether, Haynes dedicated his time to converting an Austin 7 into a lightweight version. He documented the process in illustrations drawn by hand to produce a booklet entitled Building A 750 Special.
Haynes advertised the guide in Motor Sport magazine and was surprised to receive 150 responses. In fact, he sold the first print run of 250 copies in just 10 days.
“I learnt an important lesson,” Haynes recalled. “If you can bring unique information to the attention of enthusiasts, they’ll buy it.”
Born in Ceylon, now Sri Lanka, Haynes was the son of Harold, who managed a tea plantation, and his wife Violet. Young John loved riding around the plantation with his father in their Morris 8 saloon.
When he left school, Haynes completed his National Service with the RAF. While there he met his wife Annette whom he married in 1963.
He got back into car repairs two years later while posted in Yemen after helping a colleague rebuild an Austin Healey Frogeye Sprite.
While doing so, he noticed that factory manuals were needlessly complicated for the average car owner, so he bought a camera and photographed every step as he dismantled and rebuilt the engine. He also produced meticulous diagrams that would become a hallmark of his manuals.
He decided to leave the RAF to embark on a career in publishing. The first print run of the Haynes Manual For The Sprite, published in 1966, sold 3,000 copies in less than three months. Other guides soon followed as Haynes branched out into lifestyle manuals. To date more than 200 million Haynes manuals have been sold.
A prolific car collector, in 1985 he founded the Haynes International Motor Museum in Somerset, donating 30 of his own.
Ten years later, he was awarded an OBE for services to publishing. During the ceremony the Prince of Wales asked him whether he had a manual for his Aston Martin.
Haynes died after a short illness. He is survived by Annette and two sons. Another son died in 2016.