A former aircraft engineer and draughtsman who designed a ‘one-off’ adapted car for a disabled neighbour has seen his business take flight.

Rod Brotherwood, who turns 75 on Tuesday, has had an incredible journey since taking on a project in 1984 for his paraplegic neighbour John Lambert.

He has since overseen the adaption of hundreds of vehicles, which have been host to such people as Princess Margaret, who rode in one for Prince Edward’s wedding, and the Queen Mother. In 2005 he was awarded the OBE for his services to people with disabilities.

Now semi-retired, Rod can’t quite leave the business, now nestled in a rural hamlet between Thornford and Yetminster, where he watches the pheasants from a window in the Lambert Building. “I’m trying not to interfere, but it’s difficult!” he said.

Rod’s mission to help people in wheelchairs has even extended to him travelling all the way home from Germany in a wheelchair. “I think people don’t appreciate how uncomfortable it is in a wheelchair,” he says. “Even with all the seat pads and other equipment to make it more comfortable it’s very uncomfortable indeed.”

In 1984, Rod was having a beer with neighbour John and chatting about his work when John asked if he could convert a vehicle to take his wheelchair – one that was easy to use and not a ‘Pope-mobile’ type commonly used back then. He had been using a Bedford van with a tail-lift, which was horribly difficult and dangerous to use and which made life hard when going to hospitals and shops, with their low barriers.
Rod got out his Yellow Pages – for the internet was still years away – and set about researching, eventually hitting on a Nissan Prairie. These days Brotherwoods adapt Mercedes, Fords, VW, and Peugeots as well as Nissans.
It took him several weeks, but he managed to lower the floor and adapt the chassis and make the many other changes needed so that John could travel in comfort and dignity – the two watchwords Rod has lived by ever since.

John Lambert gets his new car from Rod Brotherwood in 1984

“He really liked his new car,” says Rod. “That’s one of the things we do – we give people in wheelchairs their dignity and their comfort. Rather than being pushed into the back of a vehicle like luggage or the family dog, they ride in the second row.”

After that first vehicle, Rod saw a chance to improve life for hundreds more people. Armed once again with his trusty Yellow Pages, he phoned around scores of places, eventually coming up with a plan he couldn’t really afford, and a brochure, which he posted out.

Thankfully his gamble paid off, and he had two orders within ten days. That first year he adapted 23 cars, the next year 54. They delivered the vehicles all over the UK from Land’s End to Scotland. He later merged operations from four different sites onto one site, which had been the Thornford and Yetminster buffer depot.

Rod has spent years campaigning for safety standards and disability rights and meeting people from all over the world, who come to rural Dorset to see his operation, which now employs scores of people, in action. He has taken his business to exhibitions all over the world and held an annual show with Haynes. He was instrumental in getting London cabs adapted to carry wheelchairs and he has worked with the Department for Transport and with the EU to improve life for people in wheelchairs. Even after all this he says there is still a long way to go in the way people with disabilities are treated.

“Even the Disability Discrimination Act didn’t make it right,” he says.

Today Rod has that first car he adapted in pride of place – he bought it back from John a few years ago, before John died in 2015 at the age of 67, having spent 35 years in a wheelchair. It’s a bright red, shiny testament to how far he’s come in his fight to improve life for disabled people since he first took on that project for his neighbour.

A celebration to mark the 100th car conversion at Brotherwood’s

“I am proud to have established a rural business which is keeping people in employment,” he says. “And I am very proud to have been able to give disabled people dignity and comfort when there is still not enough out there for them.”

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