Cutting my teeth on a magazine called Kitcars & Specials (there’s a clue there) back in the eighties, it’s quite obvious that I have an attraction to hardcore, scratch-built cars.

Indeed, in recognition of this our ‘new’ magazine ‘Classic Kitcars & Specials’ tips its hat to my origins and more importantly to ‘special’ cars.

I’d heard of Jack Fisher but never met him and until I got my teeth into this cracking little biography, I had no idea that he’d built a laudable 22 specials during his lifetime.

Shamefully, I was only aware of two of them, the Fisher Spyder and Fisher GT. Jack, who died in 2013, age 92, still working on cars in Brechin, started building his eponymous specials as far back as 1942 with a delicate little bolide based – like 95 per cent were back then on an Austin 7. This would lead to a regular line of Fishers.

Plenty of people build a special and are satisfied with that, their work is done, they care not how it looks nor that it drives like a tractor and/or corners like a rowing boat.

However, by all accounts, Jack’s cars handled beautifully, with many of them proving themselves on track, often in the hands of accomplished pedallers like Graham Gauld (thanks to his subsequent books, no one has championed Scottish motorsport like Gauld incidentally).

I guess by the time that Jack launched his first GT in 1961, people were beginning to take notice.

He also built single-seaters too, notable the Fisher Atta of 1965 that was pretty sophisticated for its day and was actively intended for the dizzy heights of F2.

Running a garage that specialised in the Alfa Romeo marque naturally saw Jack focus on those mechanicals quite often and he often turned his hand to hotting up production cars such as a particularly potent Alfa 2000 GT Veloce of 1973. That one put his garage on the map thanks to its successes in the Group 1 Production Car championship for several seasons.

Possibly the prettiest of Jack’s designs, in my opinion, was the Fisher Riley of 1964 an achingly elegant looking car that still looks fresh some 56-years later.

Like so many other kicar and specials designers, Jack Fisher never truly got the acclaim that he undoubtedly deserved. Mind you, reading his story, beautifully told in this great little book, he was fine with that. His legacy lives on, however.

Available from Lickle Valley Creations – ISBN – 1 527 285 149 and a bargain at £20