John Haynes OBE, who has died at the age of 80, will be remembered as a motoring hero, who helped enable and inspire numerous amateur tinkerers to venture under their car’s bonnets.

Delve into just about any garage and dig around a bit, and chances are you’ll find a Haynes Manual – quite probably dog-eared, well-thumbed and covered in greasy fingerprints.

It used to be one of the first things you’d buy after taking ownership of a new car – and likely still is, for regular browsers of the classifieds. Put simply, if you want to know how to do any work on your car, there is no better guide than a Haynes Manual – including the car’s official manual.

The genius of the Haynes Manual lies in its relative simplicity. Each area of the car is illustrated in a series of photographs, with step-by-step captions and exploded diagrams explaining how to undertake key jobs. 

All you need is the ability to follow instructions, and a modicum of engineering talent. I can just about cope with the former, but am sorely lacking in the latter. Even so, with the help of a Peugeot 205 Owners' Manual my 18-year-old self was (just about) able to pull off minor repairs and maintenance work on my first car.