The natural selection process embodied in the saying 'survival of the fittest' has always been reflected in the world of business. And in the car business, a look at the names which have survived since the earliest days of motoring tells a lot.

In this past week's centenary commemoration of the Gordon Bennett Race of 1903, on routes through counties Kildare, Carlow and Laois, there was a good chance to do just that. It was something of a motoring time-warp, in fact.

Out of the 300-plus participating motor vehicles, ranging in manufacturing dates from 1896 to 1930, there are many brands which have died. Indeed, of the centenary rally cars built up to the year of the 1903 race, only Renault and Mercedes are in today's manufacturer listings.

Over the 34 years represented in the commemoration, Fiat, Rolls Royce, Cadillac, Ford, Vauxhall, Rover, Bentley, Citroen, Chevrolet, Chrysler, Bugatti, Morgan, Alfa Romeo, and MG are brands that still exist, though many no longer on their own.

Other names which people of my generation would remember, would have driven, are gone. Including Talbot, Panhard, Wolseley, Austin, Sunbeam, Humber, Morris and Riley.

Of course, by the time I got to drive behind those badges on my bonnet, in the 60s, they were changed utterly from the examples chugging around east Leinster this weekend.

But the romantic names of the period, perhaps the real 'golden age' of motordom if you take the view that technology is at its most interesting in its emergent years, are all gone.

They are romantic because they reflect the efforts of individuals who were pushing out the envelope of this new technology, the first personal transport that wasn't fuelled by feeding it with hay. People who cut their knuckles in putting the bits of their horseless carriages together. Often considered by their more charitable neighbours as eccentric, by others as simply mad.

Napier, Clement, Berliet, Talbot, Darraq, Panhard et Levassor, Leon Bolee, de Dion, Alldays and Onions, Vinot et Deguingand. The preponderance of French names in those early pioneering days is perhaps not surprising, as eccentricity has always been a hallmark of the French. But I can't help being really curious about 'Onions'. If his name had survived, would we have on our roads something like the 'Onions Mondeo'?

Some echoic names now also gone should be mentioned: Willys, Hupmobile, Hudson, Packard. And then the ones that evoke a motor sporting and touring nostalgia in the grand manner - Alvis, Armstrong Siddley, Delage, Frazer Nash, Studebaker, Stutz and Lagonda.

But unless we're into the vintage and veteran car game in a serious way, some names simply don't register in the motorfolk memory. I record them for 21st century remembrance: Gladiator (1903), Pope (1904), Charron (1908), White (1910), Calthorpe (1911), GWK (1911), Regal (1911), Argyll (1912), Chalmers (1913), Bean (1920), Jewett (1923), Belsize (1925), Ceirano (1926), Erskine (1927), and Essex (1928).

There are others, I'm sure. But this lookback is based on the entrants in the Gordon Bennett Centenary Rally, not any specialist knowledge of mine. And given that it is the biggest such event ever here, it's likely that any extant version of even the most rare of cars would have turned up.

In another 100 years, how many of today's brands will remain?

And will anybody care to the same extent as the 306 stalwarts who rolled out their pride and joys this week from the rally's Killashee Hotel base outside Naas?

Beam me back, Scotty ...

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