“ …When the idea of this book was first suggested to me, although I had no misgivings as to the interest of its subject for myself and those immediately concerned, I had some misgiving as to my ability to make it interesting to the general reader. I may say that this misgiving is by no means abated now that I see the finished result of my labours. But I felt a very earnest wish, which will be understood by those who have ever been in the thick of any exciting or momentous experience, to preserve, if only for my own satisfaction, some record of the early days of the motor-car in England and my own experiences in connection therewith, and to reconstruct some of the events of those exciting days before my impression of them should become blurred. In this way my book may perhaps come some day to have an interest of its own, when the world shall have forgotten that the thing we call the Motor Movement ever had a beginning ...”

Charles Jarrott - September, 1906.

(Charles Jarrott was an English racing car driver. He won the 1902 Circuit des Ardennes race and competed in the 1903 and 1904 Gordon Bennett Cup races.)