In 2021, James Martin spoke about his priorities in life and how his relationship with cars had changed since he was a teenager driving a Vauxhall Nova
James Martin once set the record straight on whether he placed cars before women in an interview with Amy Shore and John Marcar. In the interview, released in May 2021, the TV chef spoke to the two presenters about his passion for cars and cooking, and how the two had interwoven.
Nearly a third of the way into the interview on the Driven Chat podcast, ITV’s Saturday Morning host James was questioned about a quote he’d given to a magazine where he’d said that food came first in his priorities, followed by cars, his dog, and then women.
When challenged about whether that still stood, James replied: “We’re talking 22 years ago, 28 years ago. That was in printed media. The trouble is you say stuff like that and it sticks. I might have moved stuff around a bit since then, but cars have always been a big passion of mine.”
Speaking deeper on that passion, James added: “My mates over the years have collected kids, marriages, and then divorces and stuff like that but I don’t know what it is. It started out life as just buying one, and that one then kicked off and it went mad, it went absolutely mental and it was that one.”
However, before his first very expensive car, James had far more humble automotive origin in the form of a Vauxhall Nova whose name famously caused some giggles because ‘No va’ translated from Spanish into English means ‘It doesn’t go’.
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Discussing said vehicle, James recalled how long he had it and how it changed his relationship with his friends. He explained: “I ended up with a chopped Vauxhall Nova, it was a white one with a boot on the back (three cars welded together) and I bought it for £170 and it went everywhere that car.
“I had it all throughout my college life and my mates were into motorbikes and they sadly passed away by choosing to go to motorbikes when they were young kids. I think there’s probably only me left now because I was the only one that didn’t go into motorbikes straight away.”
James also revealed that before he could legally drive, he would take tractors for little spins on the farm and peer through showroom windows when he was working in London as a young starter.
Remembering those times, he said: “I used to enjoy cars on the farm and that kind of stuff, we didn’t have fancy cars, we just had tractors.
I enjoyed driving the tractor when I was in my teens, you know, 12, 13 that kind of stuff I suppose it wasn’t until I went to London where I saw all the amazing cars there when you’re working in London at 16, 17. I used to finish work and walk past all the showrooms and peer through the window.”
