Obituary - LJK Setright- Entertaining, Intriguing, sometimes Perplexing

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FREELANCE and independent: that's how Leonard Setright styled himself. It feels bizarre to think of him in the past tense. But we must because he died of cancer aged 74 in the autumn of 2005, just as Vehicle Engineer was being re-launched.

Described by Stephen Bayley as being 'closer on the scale of human potential to Isaiah Berlin than to Jeremy Clarkson', LJK Setright held trenchant views on many things, among them speed limits, taxation, pollution - and cigarettes. His own brand was usually Balkan Sobranie, extra-strong, which he smoked with a long cigarette holder.

After VE's technical editor, my husband Marcus, died in July, 2004, I invited Leonard to speak at the funeral about the Marcus he knew. Leonard agreed at once. They were friends, both engineers and FIMechE - Fellows of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers. And, though he had had no formal training, the depth and breadth of Leonard's engineering knowledge were formidable.
Some months before, I had asked him to write a technical piece for VE - the more technical the better, I said - and his answer was a straight yes. I was absolutely delighted because I was certain our readers would enjoy whatever he wrote, and would be entertained, intrigued and sometimes even perplexed.

When no copy arrived via snail mail or fax - he wouldn't, or couldn't, use a computer - I telephoned his home. His wife Helen said that he wasn't there, so I asked for a number where I might contact him. She replied that this was impossible.

Irritated, I enquired: 'If that's the case, could you please give him a message for me?'
Quietly, politely, she repeated 'That's quite impossible.'

'Really?,' I probed. 'Why? I only want to know when his article for VE will be arriving.'
'It won't be,' she said even more quietly. 'He's desperately ill. I don't think he'll last the night.'
I was stunned - and dismayed - and I kept telling myself that I really wasn't to know. For, about a month before Marcus died, Leonard had arrived in a Smart forfour, and was as usual dressed immaculately. And, considering how ill he must have been at the time of Marcus's funeral, Leonard's delivery of his tribute was amazing.

Still mortified that I inadvertently spoke brusquely so soon before his death, the very least I can now do is apologise to Helen for my stupidity and thoughtlessness.

Leonard cannot pen his own obituary, but he did write a CV published in Who's Who in the Motor Industry, an annual reference work, and surely this embraces what he considered to be the most important parts of his life.

He describes himself as a 'freelance and independent, contributor to magazines, etc'. For that's exactly what he was - freelance, not tied to any organisation, and independent of mind and spirit. Never soul-less, but certainly eccentric and a man of character.

His succinct phrases - no over-elaborate phraseology or long sentences - speak volumes about an industrious life:

'Author of many books on tyres, engines, cars, motorcycles and the like. Some photography (Gwen Salmon Trophy, l969). Some engineering consultancy.

'Career: Read law at London, spent years in practice, abandoning it for writing in l960. Tried PR briefly in l965, became freelance writer in l966.

'Invited to join IMechE in l969 and Institution of the Rubber Industry in l970. BP Fellow of Wolfson College, Cambridge, l986. Juror for Car of the Year and for Turin Design Award.'

While his way with words was so highly regarded and his skill with a camera was phenomenal, he was also an accomplished musician.

Years ago, when I commissioned him to supply a few photographs, he obliged most generously, writing: 'These pictures may be more than you bargained for, but I never was one for bargaining. It seemed to me that if I sent you plenty you could better choose what you wanted than I could.

'There you are, then: about five dozen pictures, failures included, from which you can take your pick, and for which I look forward to receiving large sums of money in due course.'

Alluding to how much I'd suggested paying for a dozen, he added: 'In which case please return those you do not want. Alternatively you can have the job lot to do with as you will (proposing a fair figure). Make your own decision. Have a dozen or all. I would not expect to see either the rejects or the (larger sum) before about two weeks.'

His technical notes and captions were always lucid, for example:
''In the Copersucar pits you may see a faceless wonder in a Nomex balaclava, about to don his helmet. That is Emerson Fittipaldi, better-looking than you may remember him.'
'Nilsson in the Lotus: note the oxygen life-support tube to his helmet.'
'Ligier cockpit: 'parquets naïf' sign on the steering wheel is a note from a semi-literate mechanic to driver Lafitte, telling him to go carefully on new brake pads.'
'Ferrari: note elegant lattice beam attachment for rear wings - an assortment of which had been tried in practice. In the picture is a high-drag high-down force rear wing slotted to reduce turbulence behind.'
'Lotus: side-panels of cockpit are aluminium, not glass fibre as in most other makes. Note also airfoil-section side pods containing radiators, etc, very effective in generating lots of down force to make the Lotus currently the best handler. Also very elegantly engineered front suspension, with steering rack passing through wishbone mounts to make sure track rods follow top wishbones exactly.'
'Brabham: flexible skirts around base of body to seal off airflow from beneath car.'

Maybe most familiar as a contributor to Car, Leonard was an incomparable motoring writer - a one-off. His cultivated but radical prose would illuminate the complexities of suspension geometry and tyre construction with allusions to Virgil, a Hebrew mystic or Rudyard Kipling. It could be challenging stuff, beyond many new readers, and it certainly stretched their minds and raised their sights.

His penchant for Latin or Greek quotations may sometimes have helped to set him apart as eccentric or aloof in the eyes of lesser colleagues, but he could also deploy it as a powerful leg-pull. For instance, when a 'modern' editor of a widely circulated magazine proposed that he restrain such allusions - dumbing down for today's readers? - Leonard responded by drafting his next column in Latin, quickly following through with the English text.

He was nothing if not interesting, and that is exactly what journalism is all about. Small wonder then that he attracted a loyal world-wide following. Those lucky enough to know him were maybe surprised that he lacked the bombast so often intrinsic to success in the media.

Quietly spoken and with a twinkle in his eye, he listened well, was favoured with a memory that made note taking redundant, and would talk to you about any topic you chose, as often as not while sipping champagne in elegant surroundings.

By contrast, out on road or track, Leonard was a devastatingly quick driver, and few were brave enough - or had sufficiently durable egos - to ride with him. So organisers of new model media introductions invariably allocated a car to him alone, rather than enlist some unwilling 'volunteer' co-driver for the white-knuckle ride.

In the course of 40 years, he wrote about two dozen books in all. These included Some Unusual Engines (1975), two works on the idiosyncratic and costly Bristol marque (1974 and 1998) and With Flying Colours (1987).

Most recently he penned Drive On!, a decade-by-decade social history of the motor car, published by Palawan Press. Palawan's mission statement is: 'To publish books of unsurpassed quality of design, illustration and authorship, of interest and attraction to lovers of beautiful things. Covering a wide range of subjects, from Aston Martin to Ferrari, from pheasants to modern art, our books are a must.'
Describing Drive On! as 'emphatically not just another book of cars', Palawan's blurb says: 'Some writers have previously studied what the car has done to society, but they have invariably taken a view that has been either geographically too narrow or historically too short. None has studied what society has done to the car, until now.

'LJK Setright, the most eminent motoring writer of our age, has written the definitive text from both these aspects and personally chosen over 300 surprisingly diverse pictures to illustrate it. Drive On! is a book that the enthusiast for motoring can read with pleasure, the critic with growing understanding, the historian with some surprise, and the scholar with satisfaction.'

The first printing was offered in three guises: leather bound in red Morocco, numbered 1-250, signed by the author - £295; clothbound, numbered 251-500 - £195; standard soft bound, numbered 501-2,000 - £75.

Luckily for the rest of us poor folk, Granta Books has since made Drive On! available in paperback (ISBN: 1 86207 628 6) at £12.

So crammed is it with facts that it is - well, almost - a reference book. For instance, Leonard includes an advertisement for the 1939 Chevrolet, with the copy lines: 'The public is choosing quality and prices - and saying Chevrolet's the choice!'. Of this he writes: 'The gimmickry of new cars is not new; just look at the list of features in the l939 Chevrolet range.' He adds: ''Knee-action riding system' is a salesman's expression, meaning independent front suspension.'

In his examination of the modernisation of feudal Japan during the Meiji dynasty, he suggests that at the end of the 19th Century the country had no urgent need for cars.

From 1912, the Kwaishinsha company produced the DAT, Datson and Datsun successively. In wry a footnote, Leonard explains that the DAT name of the first car meant 'hare' in Japanese. The 'son of DAT' model that materialised from Kwaishinsha's 1925 merger with another firm soon came to be known as Datson - a major mistake for the Japanese market, since 'son' is Japanese for 'ruin'. So Datson was changed to Datsun, and in 1934 the Nissan name was adopted.

Only in l935, under the Nissan name, did the company take a new direction. Instead of making its own versions of the tiny Austin Seven, it began to copy American practice and produced a large 75 mph six-cylinder saloon. At about the same time Toyota made its first car, which resembled a Chrysler Airflow.
Leonard was born in London to Australian parents, Lena, a fashion buyer, and Henry, an engineer and the originator of a betting system for the Tote and a rotary bus ticket machine. Thus the seeds of Leonard's enthusiasm for matters mechanical were sewn during an era 'when engineers were worshiped'.

Educated at Southgate County School, Winchmore Hill, he displayed a liking for avant-garde clothing and music. As his talent as a clarinettist burgeoned, he was recruited by jazz band leader Ray Potter, and the pair also became regulars at Goodwood motor racing circuit, beginning a lifelong interest in the sport. And the classical side of his musicianship led him to help establish the Philharmonia Chorus in 1957.

He read law at London University, but loathed it. So he turned to journalism, and in 1960 joined Machine Age, which in time he was to edit. In 1965, the Firestone tyre company engaged him to hone its PR, and later he was to work behind the scenes on radial tyre development with Pirelli.
After his first wife, Christine, an opera singer, died in 1980, Leonard sought solace across the Atlantic. Time spent with a Lubavitch community in Texas reinforced his Judaism, and with characteristic dedication he became devoutly Orthodox. Happily for his many readers, however, he also re-emerged as a writer.

Paradoxically, since it was cancer that was to fell him, he once wrote compellingly about car makers nowadays banning smoking in their press test cars. He determined: 'It is refreshing that there remain stalwarts for whom driving and smoking - two of the greatest pleasures known to man - are not to be separated.

Leonard John Kensell Setright, born August 10, 1931, died September 7, 2005, leaving a widow, Helen, and daughters Hilary and Anthea from his first marriage.