Gilda has Peoples on the move

any other decade.

For the coming year, he is counting on a turnover in the region of

#100m at his Peoples car business, based on the Glasgow-Rutherglen

boundary at Shawfield and taking its place in the top ten Ford

dealerships in the UK.

In a whirlwind rise to prominence, he can lean back in his spacious

office and contemplate the fact that his mother still lives up the road,

in the same rented tenement, near the old Vogue Cinema in Cathcart Road,

where he was born.

''She is a working-class woman, with working-class ethics and

principles, but she is very proud of what I have done,'' he tells you.

''She has also been a catalyst for much of my activity.''

His father, an upholsterer in the shipyards, died when the boy was 12

and his mother strove to make ends meet and do her best for him.

When he left school at 15, Brian Gilda (the name is Scots-Irish)

became a lawyer's clerk, upstairs from Reid's Bar in Hope Street, and

showed enough promise to be encouraged towards a law degree.

Instead, he set out to earn more immediate money -- and his subsequent

career has been full of adventure. The first, unlikely step was to join

a Canadian company for the purpose of selling magazines, on a

door-to-door basis, across Europe to South Africa.

''I was then back in London, selling magazines and medical

dictionaries, when my mother sent me a cutting from the Evening Times,

showing that Arnold Clark wanted a junior car salesman,'' he recalls.

''I landed that job in 1969 and spent three years in which I learned a

lot from Arnold Clark. Then I was approached by the Skelly family and

eventually took over as their sales manager at Dumbarton, coming in

contact with Ian Skelly, whose business ethic seemed to be driven from

North America.

''That was also my first contact with Ford. Keen to try North America

for myself, I went off to Montreal, where I sold Pontiac and Buick cars.

That was tough and, in professional terms, I thought the people over

there were as good as any I had known.''

Back home once more, the clean-cut, dynamic Gilda was engaged to run a

couple of garages for Gael Securities, a financial holding company with

some trading subsidiaries. But the late 1970s and early 1980s were bad

times for the motor trade and the business went into receivership in

1982.

That was how, at the age of 33, Brian Gilda found himself in the dole

queue, an experience he remembers with horror: ''Nobody can kid me that

being in employment is tougher or more soul-destroying or demeaning than

being on the dole.''

His personal track record with Gael, however, had been noted by Ford,

who pencilled him in as one for the future, a likely candidate for their

plan of arranging finance for young entrepreneurs.

''They told me there was an opportunity at Stout Brothers of Bathgate,

where they held the franchise. If I could arrange terms with the owners,

I could have the franchise.''

The fact that he managed to raise #300,000 of equity owed little to

Scottish enthusiasm. Only the Scottish Development Agency weighed in

with help, the financial institutions giving him the cold shoulder.

The balance was raised in London, through Gresham Trust and Lloyd's

Development Capital. Gilda put in his worldly wealth of #20,000 and the

only other shareholder was his financial director, Douglas Knowles.

The Bathgate enterprise was under way in the summer of 1983 and showed

first-year profits of #219,000.

''At first, I wanted my own name up in lights,'' he confesses, ''but

by the time the business took off I had changed my mind. There was one

Arnold Clark and one Ian Skelly. What I needed was a trading title which

people would remember.

''That was when I thought about Henry Ford and his creation of 'the

people's car' -- the Model T Ford. I chose the name Peoples and nobody

liked it. The shareholders didn't like it. My mother didn't like it. But

I was determined.''

It seems to have done profits no harm. In 1985 they had risen to

#230,000 and the following year they were #443,000. A second garage was

opened at Livingston.

Confirmed in their opinion of Gilda, Ford next offered him Clydeford,

at Shawfield, Glasgow, which had been in receivership in 1982, when it

was run by Peter Cannon, and was incurring heavy losses again for its

English owners in 1986. He took up the offer.

Last year they came back with a suggestion for the Stormont dealership

in Liverpool which, by chance, had once been owned by the Skelly family

of Glasgow.

Gilda went back to his previous backers who came up with another #10m.

They included once again the SDA, for whom he has only the highest

praise.

With four locations, the Peoples organisation now runs seven different

companies, including their own development and marketing company, and

the intention is to seek a Stock Market flotation next year.

Looking back on his phenomenal rise to prominence, Brian Gilda, now

aged 40, puts it down not only to the fact that he committed himself

both financially and emotionally but to that earlier experience of

receivership, which made him terrified of failure.

As a measure of his success, he was among those recently sounded out

by merchant bankers about buying the Ian Skelly organisation, with its

headquarters just a mile away. That brought him a smile of satisfaction,

though his Ford connection and the territorial rules precluded him from

considering it.

Away from business, he relaxes with Celtic Football Club and has just

entered into a #270,000 sponsorship with them. Maintaining good

community relations, he also backs the Boghall and Bathgate Caledonian

Pipe Band and was hailed as chieftain of the Highland Games at Bathgate,

an honour which pleased none more than his mother in Cathcart!

Brian Gilda is off to America soon, when he will sound out Ford about

expansion possibilities on that continent.

Back home, he lives in Dumbarton with his wife, Marie, and children

Nicola, 14, Jocelyn, 6, and Stephanie, 5.

As a sign of changed circumstances, one of the Gilda children has

suggested that they should not go to Disneyland again this year. She

would rather go to Liverpool! I'm sure her granny would approve.