In the mid 90’s Promotor returned to its roots. Peter Calderwood had worked for Fords in the 60’s and when he set up Promotor (Europe) Ltd Fords supplied a large percentage of the regular work. It was mainly promotional work, from film shoots to appraisals and much of it was out of Dunton. The company did less work for Fords during the 80’s but in the early to mid 90’s they picked up a contract to look after the cars and vans that Ford needed to promote sales of their products.
I was involved in the contract negotiations but even at that early stage I could see it wouldn’t be my type of work. I stayed on for another couple of years before retiring to the funny farm. Fords were not an easy company to work for but Peter soldiered on as he knew ultimately other companies would be interested in taking over the contract. However, Peter was always looking for other ways to increase revenue and one (silly) idea was to convert one of our lorries to include living accommodation, workshop and car transport to out of the way locations. Unfortunately very few production or film companies were interested. Peter told me it had cost over £50 grand to convert the lorry and have the trailer built and knowing him, as I did, I’m sure the cost was a lot higher.
I have posted a photo of the finished rig and a copy of part of a brochure Peter had printed. The lorry and trailer were quite impressive but unfortunately that didn’t pay the bills.
Of course later on in the 90’s ‘Ontime’ came knocking on the door and before long Promotor was history.
