It is good to see that enterprise, initiative and engineering expertise live on in Bradford. The car-building ambitions of family motor-repair firm Pell Automotive follow a long and proud tradition in the district.

Everyone has to start in a small way, as Pells are doing with the launch of their super-fast sports car, the Genesis.

Jowetts began modestly and grew to become a major British motor manufacturer, supplying Javelins, Jupiters and Bradford vans to customers all around the world from their works at Idle. Although the company ceased production many years ago, hundreds of the vehicles it made live on in the loving hands of enthusiasts, as do the motor-cycles made by Scott in Shipley.

There is much to be proud of in Bradford's motor-manufacturing past. A reminder of that is in the transport gallery at the Industrial Museum at Eccleshill, which contains a selection of Jowett and Scott vehicles. Now we might have a future motor industry to be proud of as well.

The Genesis is not intended to be a mass-market car. No small firm could aspire to those sort of heights nowadays, given the crushing international competition from the big boys. It is aiming for a similar niche to the Blackpool-made TVR, and will be built to order.

We wish Pell Automative all the very best with their new initiative. Perhaps at some distant time owners of the Genesis might gather at rallies as owners of surviving Javelins and Jupiters do now, to admire their gleaming concourse cars and remember another glorious chapter in Bradford's motor-making history.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.