1954 – McCairn’s Motors, Santry, Co. Dublin

During the early years of the Irish Republic, the government using import tariffs made it prohibitively expensive to buy any car which was not assembled in the country. At one time there were many CKD (Completely Knocked Down) car assembly plants in Ireland. The kits arrived in crates, usually with a fully assembled engine, gearbox and transmission, and were assembled using local labour, glass and trim. McCairn’s took full advantage of this and opened in Alexandra Road in 1935 assembling Vauxhall cars for GM.

Scott’s office had previously constructed a premises for McCairn’s at the corner of Tara and Townsend streets in Dublin. Wilfrid Cantwell who had worked on it was happy to see it go. “My first job was McCairns Garage on Townsend or Tara Street. A couple of years later they moved to Santry, and it was wiped out, which was no harm because there was a lot of plumbing in it, of which I knew nothing. My second job was a complete disaster also.”

By 1954, McCairns opened this massive works, and headquarters in Santry, assembling various car brands including Vauxhall cars and Bedford commercials. Amongst the design team in Scott’s office on this project was Patrick Scott and Danish architect Erhardt Lorenz. The engineer Sean Mulcahy, who worked for Jorgen Varming on the building: “At McCairns Garage, we had lit the petrol pumps by indirect lighting off the canopy. However, Patrick Scott decided that this should be painted blue, so it didn’t work. That was the kind of thing that happened with Scott’s office.”

Demolished, and now the site of the Omni Shopping Centre.