He won the 1953 Monte Carlo Rally driving a Ford Zephyr, beating a string of more exotic cars, plus the Holden driven by the Australian super-team of Stan Jones, Tony Gaze and Lex Davison.
This flying Dutchman also built an aluminium-bodied V8 sports car just after World War II.
The Gatford Aerodynamic Coupe might not have been a thing of beauty, but its mere creation stood up as quite an achievement in the war-ravaged Netherlands.
He raced at Le Mans four times, competed in the original Mille Miglia, was a qualified pilot, a clever electrical engineer and became, arguably, the world's first professional rally driver.
By normal standards, Maurice Gatsonides should be in the Pantheon of Cool. Instead, an abbreviation of his name sends a shiver down the spine of many a motorist.
Yes, ''Gatso'' survives in the language not in honour of his motor-racing career or his reputed work in the resistance during the war. It's a byword for his best-known invention - the radar speed camera.
It started innocently enough. In those pre-telemetry days, Gatsonides was trying to measure his cornering speed so he could improve his rally driving.
From the late 1950s, he developed a system with two pneumatic tubes, which were spaced apart on the road or track.
When the two tubes were run over by a car, an electronic box timed the interval and calculated the road speed.
Although the contraption was designed to help people go faster, not slower, when police departments began showing an interest, Gatsonides formed the Gatsometer BV company in 1958 and started doing very well, thank you very much.
Gatsometer BV introduced its first speed camera in 1964 and incorporated radar into the device in 1971. Soon these radar cameras were adapted to capture vehicles running red lights.
Today, there are about 45,000 Gatso cameras in more than 60 countries, including Australia.
Their sophistication has increased. They are now digital, rather than film, and can read number plates.
They are hand-held and patrol-car-mounted, as well as fixed, and they can also catch motorists who are in the wrong lane or who do not pay tolls.
However, the basic idea of the speed camera remains the same - to measure the time a car takes to move between two points and convert that to road speed.
Victorian police started using amphometers - similar to the original Gatsometer with its pneumatic tubes - from the mid-1960s, and radar speed cameras from 1985. NSW followed, with radar speed cameras in 1991, installing fixed units in 1999.
According to some reports, most fixed-speed cameras in Australia are now Gatsometers, although the term ''Gatso'' is not as widely used as in Britain, where it is usually preceded by a swearword.
If you believe Australian politicians, these cameras have saved countless lives. What isn't in dispute is that the cameras have raised hundreds of millions of dollars each year for state governments.
Speed and red-light cameras earned the Victorian government nearly $250 million in the 2011-12 financial year. Figures show the most lucrative installations in Sydney bring in more than $1 million each a year.
Meanwhile, Maurice Gatsonides, rally driver, resistance fighter and, to many, class-A prick, died in 1998, aged 87.