Roy McCarthy was a child with a fix for the means of transport and when he grew up became a boring car enthusiast (any reference to existing or actual people is purely casual) and one of the creative directors of the Küla Studio in Liverpool. His classic car illustration, printed in limited series and collected by pop-culture fans, allowed his passion to find a reasonable way to be appreciated.

In “A is for Allegro” the author collects, in a sort of visual alphabet with a sharp writing piece, all the cars that have populated her childhood or aroused his curiosity.

Roy tells that on a morning in 1975 his father came out of the house to go to work with his own Escort Mk1 GT and went back with a vintage Austin Allegro. From that day – the author reminds us – his father no longer cared about how the family car would look like, or how fast it was, “he only needed to take him from point A to point B” and this fact has shaken the infancy of the author.

Among the cars included are the BMW 2002, the Citroën DS or the Fiat X1/9; but also Opel Kadett and Renault 5 or the Yugo 45, added as the worst car in history.

The simple but evocative illustrations help to create a sort of visual art gallery of the civil automotive world at the end of the twentieth century: from the letter A of the obsolete Allegro to the Z of the Ford Zephyr, a car that he saw every day parked along the road carrying him to school.