John Haynes obituary
John Haynes, who has died aged 80, created a publishing empire out of the enormous success of the car workshop manuals that bore his name. In all, 200m have been sold since 1966, covering the maintenance and repair of more than 1,000 different models.
His formula was simple: dismantle and rebuild a car, illustrate with clear black and white pictures and diagrams, then describe the process in detail, in a language that the lay person can understand. With the familiar yellow and red logo, impressive cut-away drawings, fault diagnosis and step-by-step approach to every possible task - be it changing a bulb or dismantling and rebuilding a complete engine - the Haynes manuals captured the DIY ethos of the 1960s, 70s and 80s: a more self-reliant time, when maintaining the family saloon was still a bastion of male pride and the vehicles most people drove were simple, logical and analogue.
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