Hirst was born in Saddleworth, West Riding of Yorkshire, England and attended Hulme Grammar School in Oldham, across the county boundary in Lancashire.

He arrived in Germany in the summer of 1945, along with his colleague, Colonel Charles Radclyffe, when the British Army took control of the town of Wolfsburg.

When the UK came across it, Hirst, sensing something was not right, quickly cleared some debris from the generating plant building and discovered it had been put there to disguise the fact that it was still operational.

Hirst then found a pre-war prototype Volkswagen in a remote workshop on the site and realised that the factory could be used for producing cars for the British Army.

[8] Hirst was fascinated by the potential of a four-wheel drive "Commanderwagon", which he was confident would sell to the French and Canadian forestry industries.

Two of the most significant 'special' cars developed by Volkswagen while under the control of the British were the 'Radclyffe Roadster', and a four-seater convertible, both custom-built by Rudolph Ringel.

Hirst, the Control Commission for Germany's British Senior Resident Officer, arrived at the Volkswagen factory in August of that year.

The one strongest memory he would refer to regularly was the smell of the fish glue used to fix the cardboard headlinings in early cars.

The second model was given to Colonel Charles Radclyffe; the third was presented to Heinrich Nordhoff, whom the British occupying authorities appointed managing director of Volkswagen in early 1948.

Just one month earlier, he had appeared in an edition of the British Top Gear magazine, which revealed the story of how Major Hirst revived the Volkswagen car plant.