Nan Lindsay: Car industry stalwart and first woman to head the Scottish Motor Trade Association

The F1 fan left school aged 16 to work in her father’s shop where she would respond to customers asking for credit, ‘Aye, nae bother’

Lindsay was president of the SMTA from 1992 to 1994 (Phil Davison)

Nan Lindsay, who has died of cancer aged 75, was a well-known figure in the Scottish car industry, the first and so far only woman to serve as president of the Scottish Motor Trade Association (SMTA). During her term in office, 1992-94, one of her favourite duties was opening the Scottish Motor Show at Glasgow’s Scottish Exhibition and Conference Centre, now known as the Scottish Event Campus.

The SMTA was formed in 1903 to encourage, promote and protect Scottish car dealers big or small and Lindsay spent many years doing so long before and after the two years she wore the golden chain of the president’s office.

Nan spent most of her career in the industry. She was the wife and business partner of Dumbarton car dealer John Lindsay who ran Dumbuck Garage, at the junction where drivers from Glasgow choose between the road to the Highlands or the Mull of Kintyre. That key crossroads, and the fact that the garage had long been a famous Jaguar dealership run by Sir Jackie Stewart’s father Bob, made it a natural stopping-off point for car buyers and enthusiasts.

Focusing on his racing career, Jackie never took over the garage and sold it in 1965 to his pal John, who had started there as a mechanic straight after school. Given the economic climate of the time, John gave up Jaguar and became a Vauxhall dealer. Downmarket, perhaps, but more economically viable on the Clydeside of the time.

John sold the cars while Nan helped with the bookkeeping and made sure more cars were going out than coming in. The couple were also childhood and lifelong friends of Jackie Stewart and his wife (Helensburgh-born) Helen, and accompanied them to racetracks from Jackie’s earliest days at the Ingliston, Oulton Park and Snetterton circuits through his glory days as three-time Formula One world champion and during his retirement travels as a track-safety pioneer, TV pundit and ambassador for the sport.

She and her husband John were friends of F1 legend Jackie Stewart (Phil Davison)

Sir Jackie always said Nan and John were his closest friends and, with their Clydeside accents, helped him keep his feet on the ground when he was surrounded by hangers-on and wannabes on the glamorous F1 circuit. Nan was, however, known to put on her poshest accent when swigging champers in the paddock club at F1 races while John, a car fanatic, would be seeking out the best corner from which to see the race.

Agnes Stewart Davison, always known as Nan, was born in Dumbarton in 1943 to Kit Davison and his wife Agnes (nee Rodger) who was from the Vale of Leven. Nan was born “up a close” at 5 Meadowbank Street, where her parents had survived the Luftwaffe Blitz aimed at the shipyards.

She attended Knoxland primary school and Hartfield secondary, leaving aged 16 to work in her father’s general store, Davison’s Emporium on Castle Street, Dumbarton, opposite Ballantine’s distillery and Denny’s shipyard. Many of the customers worked at Denny’s or Ballantine’s, others were war widows who often asked if they could buy now and pay next week. “Aye, nae bother,” was the usual reply.

When she was 14, Nan met John Lindsay and it was love at first sight. She became an awed pillion on his Triumph motorbike until, in 1959, he showed up at her door with one of the first Minis seen in Scotland, bright red and with a racing-style wooden steering wheel. They married in 1965 and were inseparable thereafter, until John died last November. Their only child Damon was born in 1968.

When John retired in the late 1980s, Damon, still only 20, effectively ran the dealership, now known as Lindsays Dumbuck. Damon took over formal ownership in 1993 and turned it into one of the most successful Vauxhall dealerships in Scotland. Nan stayed on as an accountant and adviser until she retired in 2004. For many years she looked after Jackie Stewart’s elder brother Jimmy, himself a leading car racer of his era. (Jimmy had suffered from but later recovered from an alcohol problem.)

For much of their lives, Nan and John lived in a bungalow next to Dumbuck Garage, the house Jackie Stewart was born in and bears a plaque saying so. Latterly, they moved to the village of Rhu, near Helensburgh, where they enjoyed sitting on their balcony watching submarines, Royal Marine ribs and other vessels come and go through the Gare Loch and the Clyde estuary.

After John was diagnosed with leukaemia and Nan with cancer, they were well looked after by their neighbours in their block of flats in Rhu. Sir Jackie Stewart continued to visit or keep in touch with Nan until the end.

In her dying months, she was cared for her by doctors and nurses at the Beatson Institute in Glasgow, although she was allowed to live at home and travel to and fro for tests. After a sudden deterioration, she died in the Lomond Ward of the Vale of Leven hospital near Dumbarton. Throughout her illness, and particularly during her last days, she was lovingly cared for by her close family – her son Damon, daughter-in-law Elaine and her granddaughters Iona and Lara. In addition, she is survived by her younger brother Phil Davison, a London-based journalist.

Nan Lindsay, motor industrialist, born 25 April 1943, died 14 March 2019