Geneva, like Gibraltar, seemed rock solid, permanent, everlasting. Motor Shows came and went but in the calendar of the car, the Salon Auto Genève was a Pillar of Hercules. Every spring come March the automotive world beat paths to its doors. Excepting wartimes, for more than a century the Committee and Council of the "Salon International de l'Automobile" would confidently fix a date for the next one.

Until now. But even if it never happens again, Geneva shows left a legacy. Unstuffy Swiss press parties, memorable launches (think E-type Jaguar) entertaining engineers, two enlightening hours of dinner-table talk with Ferdinand Piëch. It wasn’t relaxing. Dr Piëch (below) conversed amiably in measured, careful, precise English. “He speaks German just as carefully,” said a VW senior, who had never found it relaxing either. Switzerland didn’t have a motor industry of its own, but it was where you met legends face to face.

The unique square Palexpo had glamour and showmanship. It seemed to open a new vast lofty hall every year, you could walk in straight from the airport or the station. It glittered. The cars shone, girls still posed for photographers and every ten paces you met somebody you knew. And if there was something you needed to look up you could browse Braunschweig.

Long before the Internet, Geneva’s motor show catalogue was like no other. The Eric Dymock Vintage Archive’s unbroken run of them, invaluable in compiling books like our new Jaguar Centenary, starts from 1960 (below). When I was on the road test staff of The Motor, Braunschweig was The Bible. Published by Automobil Revue Revue Automobile, the Berne-based bilingual magazine, a copy came free with every Geneva show press credential. It was no lightweight, but if you were smart you always took it home with you. Editor-in-chief Robert Braunschweig (1914-2001) compiled it, with precise specifications of every car in every country in the world. He was a stickler for detail. It was packed with facts.

Junketing does not sound very Swiss. Every year Fiat parked a boat by a quayside, an old Lac Leman paddle steamer with a tall narrow funnel as I remember. Every year it brimmed with journalists, photographers, and hangers-on, sometimes publicists from rivals who couldn’t afford a boat of their own. For many years in the 1990s Mercedes-Benz ensured the better half of Fleet Street motoring correspondents came to lunch on one of the press days. The speeches tended to be long but well worth long fast drives, a convivial overnight stop at L'Abbaye St Michel, Tonnerre, and driving the latest models. You had to be very firm about writing objectively afterwards. Not every colleague managed it. I leave their identities to my memoirs.

ABOVE: Giugiaro’s twin-boom design was a feature of Geneva in 2007. Palexpo pictured from the take-off runway at Geneva airport. The collected works: The catalogues.

The Geneva Salon is in suspension. In 2020 the 90th was cancelled due to Covid. What would have been the 91st became a pandemic victim as well. Global chip shortages - silicon not French fried – was then held to blame for calling off 2022. They are planning 2023. Or will that be another wartime?

In Phoenician tradition Gibraltar and Ceuta are rocks, each side of the Gibraltar Strait associated with the Pillars of Melqart — a representation of the Canaanite Baal (God of rain, thunder and fertility), linked to Heracles (Hercules), thus Pillars of Hercules. 540w