From exploring sugar mill machinery as a boy to breathing new life into forgotten classics, John Booth has spent a lifetime turning curiosity into craftsmanship. Now, his passion for motoring history is helping inspire a celebration of classic cars, timeless fashion and nostalgia.
Born in Durban, John Booth’s earliest memories are steeped in the hum of machinery and the rhythm of industry. Growing up in Darnall, where his father worked as a sugar mill foreman, John was introduced early to the mechanics of movement, power and precision.
“I can remember my dad taking me for tours around the sugar mill,” John recalls. “I was fascinated by the machinery, from crushing cane to those massive flywheels generating so much kinetic energy.”
That fascination never left him. Even as a child in primary school art classes, while others sketched landscapes or figures, John was drawing tractors, engines and mechanical systems. He was already asking how things worked long before he had the tools to build or fix them.
When his family later moved to Hillcrest, John’s curiosity found a new playground. Cycling through the Embo tribal area during the 1970s, he would stop to study abandoned vehicles and wrecks, often wondering what they once were, and whether they could run again.
That question turned into action when he spotted a battered 1960s BSA 175 leaning against a wall. With R8 saved from birthday money, he bought it, rebuilt the engine, resprayed it using his father’s compressor, and taught himself to ride in the garden before eventually riding it to school.
It was the beginning of a lifelong habit … seeing potential where others saw scrap.
School life, however, was not without its characters. John remembers the strict discipline of the era, particularly a woodwork teacher who took great pride in enforcing rules for the group of pupils who rode motorcycles to school. Bikes had to be switched off, pushed in and carefully parked, although not everyone complied quietly.
“There were days we’d try and ride straight in, hoping to impress someone,” John says with a laugh. “But he would be waiting. We’d end up pushing the bikes out and back in again, hoping nobody was watching.”
Behind the humour was something more serious, a young man learning resilience, discipline and practical skill. Money was tight, and like many of his peers, John learned early that ingenuity often mattered more than resources.
After school, national service led him into the South African Air Force, where he trained in radar and worked in air defence tracking aircraft movements. From there, his career became a journey through engineering in many forms, including Toyota, Aberdare Cables and later Atlas Cranes in the UK, where he worked on large-scale industrial design and systems integration.
At every stage, he collected skills, welding, machining, CAD design and fabrication, often learning through short courses and hands-on experience. Eventually, he returned to South Africa and expanded into architecture and workshop-based design, blending creativity with engineering precision.
But alongside the professional path, there was always another life running in parallel. The restoration of vehicles. Over the years, John has restored and rebuilt an extraordinary collection of machines, each one approached with the same philosophy … not perfection for perfection’s sake, but respectful reinvention.
“I am not a bolt counter,” he explains. “I prefer restomod. Restore the car, but make it safer, usable and enjoyable.”
His current collection reflects that ethos, including a 1934 Mercedes rebuilt to W22 specification, a pair of rebodied Rovers, a Ford Escort Mk1 rebuilt in period style, and a 1968 BSA Thunderbolt motorcycle complete with sidecar, once used for scenic rides and picnics around KZN.
One of his most personal projects remains a Ford Escort, a model he once owned in his youth. “It is rare now, and people react to it,” John says. “At shows, you see the nostalgia in their faces.”
For John, restoration is not just mechanical. It is emotional. The moment of turning a key and hearing an engine come back to life is, for him, a conversation across time.
“What keeps me going is that first start,” he says. “You think about who last drove it, how long it has been silent, and then suddenly it is alive again.”
That sense of connection extends beyond the garage. John is a member of several motoring clubs, including the Classic Motorcycle Club of Natal, and regularly uses his vehicles for charitable and community events.
Now, that lifelong passion is feeding into something larger. Later this year, a new motoring and lifestyle event, Vintage Vogue and Velocity, will bring together fashion, music and classic cars in a celebration of eras past. Guests will be encouraged to dress in period style, matching decades of automotive and fashion history. For John, the event is a natural extension of what he has always believed.
“Cars and fashion have always gone hand in hand,” he says. “Back then, what you drove said something about you. This event brings that feeling back.”
It is not about nostalgia alone. It is about connection. Between people, design, history and the machines that once defined status, identity and imagination. And in the middle of it all is a man who never stopped asking how things work, and never stopped trying to bring them back to life.
