A former Grenadier Guard has described how he tried to avert disaster when he lost control of a car and ploughed into the wall of an office in Falmouth town centre at about 60mph.

David Willis, 71, of Trelawny Road, said he acted on "pure instinct" when he deliberately drove through bollards to warn people he could not stop the Renault Megane Scenic he was driving.

Staff at Hine Downing Solicitors in Berkeley Vale were lucky to escape injury after the car collided with the front wall of the building shortly after 8.30am last Thursday.

Mr Willis, who served in the guards in Berlin in 1956 and has won medals for bravery and distinguished conduct, told the Packet how the courtesy car, which came from Dales Renault Garage in Scorrier, had been left outside his home by his son the night before the crash. The next morning Mr Willis got into the car to go to a doctor's appointment but could not find the handbrake and later discovered that it was in a different position to what he was used to.

Mr Willis said: "I reversed a little bit so I could pull out into the road and then could not get it into gear. By this point a few seconds had passed and the car was moving down the hill and gaining speed and I was still looking for the handbrake.

"I was now in a panic situation but as a Grenadier Guard you don't panic, you just act. The vehicle had a mind of its own and by now I was at Killigrew Street and I must have been doing around 40mph.

"I swerved around three cars and then I thought I was going to die or worse, kill someone else. I could see people and cars everywhere." Mr Willis described how in a split second he had to decide which way to turn the car. He thought that if he turned left onto Killigrew Street he would hit another car coming down the hill and if he turned right he would end up on The Moor and could kill several people.

He said: "So I decided to go straight on and I tried to warn people that I could not stop so they could get out of my path.

"I went crashing through the bollards to make a noise to warn people. It made such a sound, it was like guns going off. Then I hit the wall and I must have been doing around 60mph by then."

Mr Willis was taken to the Royal Cornwall Hospital to be treated for a cut to his head and claims that since the accident he has lost some short-term memory.

Mr Willis takes pride in the fact that he has never had a road accident before and attributes it to his training in the Grenadier Guards, where among other things he drove Conqueror tanks.

He added that he usually drove an automatic motability car and was not used to driving a manual vehicle like the Renault courtesy car which had been lent to him by Dales.

Mr Willis, who is currently an inventor, has been likened to Richard Trevithick by a professor at the University of London for his invention, the Willis Motor, which operates using magnets and radio waves. He also developed a plastic paint which has been used to paint ships and oil rigs.

Fortunately no one was in the office at the time of the crash but staff recalled hearing a loud bang as the car colliding with the wall.

Martin Dean, practice manager at Hine Downing, said: "It was lucky that the office was empty at the time otherwise things could have been very different.

"We have had a surveyor in to check the building and after the walls were propped up we were told it was safe to carry on as usual.

"It did disrupt things for a while but we are back to business now and we would like to point out that we do have plenty of parking at the back of the office."

Mr Dean also described how one of the members of staff was particularly lucky to escape injury, he said: "One of the staff was in early opening what we call the early post and had parked immediately outside of the front of the building. They then left to get the rest of the post and just a few minutes after that the car hit the building. They were very lucky."

Mr Dean added that people at the office had been joking about the incident and making comments such as "everyone is just knocking down the door of Hine Downing Solicitors just to get in."

The car was eventually moved and traffic cleared later in the morning.

The crash almost interupted proceedings for another local businessman. Ian Laws was due to exchange contracts on his Costcutter shop in Market Strand on Thursday, and staff at Hine Downing made sure it was business as usual despite the incident.

The Costcutter shop has now become a Spar.