Joseph Busuttil, on behalf of the Malta Old Motors Club, writes:

The recent passing away of Lino Gauci Borda leaves a significant and irreplaceable void in all those who crossed his path, briefly or longer, as he wended his way through a colourful and multi faceted life.

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A family doctor for more than four decades, and a parliamentarian for nearly two, he carried out his responsibilities with diligence and dedication.

A friendly and disarming smile was his trademark, even when vicissitudes battered his door.

While being totally focused on his family and his formal public life, Dr Gauci Borda also harboured a fiery passion for old vehicles.

Like many other classic car aficionados, he was inexorably smitten when his father bought him a small pedal car, a Lines Brothers Sports Tourer, in 1939. Later on, when he needed to offload some of the pressure stemming from his public life, he thought of harnessing his keen and constant interest in old cars, and subsequently, in 1980, he bought his first classic car, a white 1958 Austin Healey Sprite Mark I. Other vehicles followed, but the Sprite, or Frogeye, remained his favourite.

 His untiring efforts over many years to raise awareness of, and respect for, the cultural heritage that surrounds classic cars saw not only more people committing themselves seriously to this pastime, but also the gradual introduction of positive and generous measures by the authorities to benefit old motors owners.

Interviewed by the Sunday Times Motoring magazine in March 2006, he gleefully observed that while in the past the trend was for classic cars to leave these islands, bought by foreigners to be exported and enjoyed in far flung lands, the tendency had now been reversed, with Maltese and Gozitans not only restoring more local vehicles, but also importing old cars from abroad!

The Malta Old Motors Club was his baby, and following its birth in 1989, the good doctor committed himself lock, stock and barrel, to nurturing it successfully through the periods, sometimes tranquil, at times turbulent, of childhood, adolescence and adulthood.

Through his stewardship both membership and cars increased, and a full programme of events and activities, including contacts and visits abroad, was put in place.

Dr Gauci Borda had a dream – that of providing an appropriate roof befitting the club and its many members.

He turned that vision into a committed crusade, searching high and low, knocking on doors, cultivating contacts, until an old house in Lija was acquired. When this place later proved impractical to cope with the rapid rate of development of the club, he turned his sight on an old, derelict fort in Mosta.

The odds were highly stacked against him. But with his jovial, yet firm, attitude, cajoling, negotiating, pushing, pleading – he managed to beat a thousand and one obstacles that came his way.

It was to be his last major intervention, his most serious and successful operation. The good doctor is now gone but the patient lives on healthily to tell the fairy tale, in the state-of-the-art rehabilitated clubhouse.   

Sincere condolences go to his bereaved family, who now lovingly continues to care for his classic cars.