Private Motor Club Vol. 02 Issue 02

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A U S T R A L I A

Cover and below Philip Kadoorie pushing ‘Bandit’ the Porsche 911 Safari to its very limits on the East African Safari Classic Rally.

Photos: McKlein

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L IMIT ED EDI T I O N F I N E A RT PR INTS AND C AR DS FRO M O R I G I NA L I L L UST R AT IONS Peter Hutton born 1937 studied illustration and graphics at Twickenham School of Art, worked in advertising in London becoming a freelance illustrator in 1960 when he moved to Sussex with his wife and family. Latterly specialising in architectural perspectives working in pen line and ink washes, in retirement returning to indulge a life long passion for motor racing with his interest in colour and portraying reflective surfaces.

Telephone: +44 (0)1243 585303

Email: info@peterhuttonillustrator.com

www.peterhuttonillustrator.com

LAST CHANCE With the world seemingly falling apart in front of our eyes – well, it was as we went to print – it’s not exactly a great time to produce an issue on the theme of ‘adventure’.

It feels like the world is shutting down: events are getting cancelled, borders closed and a substantial amount of features have had to be put on hold or binned.

The effect this will have on the year is already fairly obvious: the road trips and events we all love will likely be cancelled or postponed.

This will make producing the next few issues a challenge, but we’re already looking at those next issues and are confident we’ll still deliver unique content.

Remarkably, we’ve pulled together an issue that should be good company while you sit among your rolls of toilet paper and boxes of pasta in quarantine. Thankfully, print doesn’t carry viruses, as far as I know, so as long as the planes, trains and automobiles are still moving, we can get this issue delivered to you.

Our cover story takes us back to

late last year and the East African Safari Rally. Philip Kadoorie tells a story of an event that pushed him to physical and mechanical limits in ‘Bandit’ – a Tuthills-built Safari Porsche 911.

Elsewhere, Charlotte Vowden was all set to drive her grandfather’s MGA across Asia to Everest Base Camp: the trip of a lifetime, but just after she dropped the car off to be shipped to Bangkok, the trip was pulled due to travel restrictions.

Gutting! Charlotte’s story is a heartbreaking but fascinating read at the same time.

Meanwhile, I set off in a McLaren 720S Spider to check out the second edition of The ICE Concours in St Moritz. Arriving in Colmar, I was greeted with the news that the event had been cancelled, but you can still read my review and learn why the 720S is one of the best cars in the world right now. Closer to home, James Bannister drove an Audi R8 from St Ives to Braemar to discover The Fife Arms hotel.

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Also in this issue, we have Gillian Carr on the very British pastime of vintage trials, Alex Goy travels to Australia to drive the Lotus Evora GT410 Sport in the scorched countryside, Toby Moody looks back at the history of the monumental Paris-Dakar rally, Andrew Frankel remembers the original adventurist Tony Rolt, Adam Hay-Nicholls recalls the time Mark Thatcher got lost in the desert and we step back to the eighties with a look at the mythical M25 races.

One thing is for sure: 2020 has been turned on its head, but this is when mankind becomes its most creative. Our time enjoying these vehicles is numbered, and I can’t reiterate enough the importance of using these machines we love right now… before it’s too late.

Tim Hutton Editor

CONTRIBUTORS ABBY BOWERS ADAM HAY-NICHOLLS ALEX GOY ANDREW FRANKEL CHARLOTTE VOWDEN GILLIAN CARR JAMES BANNISTER JONNY SHEARS MAX GIRARDO SAM BURNETT STEPHEN ERRITY TOBY MOODY

ADVERTISING To discuss advertising in Private Motor Club and our various packages available please contact Laura Holloway at advertising@pmcmedia.co.uk and we will send you a media pack, alternatively you can download a media pack from the website in the ‘about’ section.

Editor-In-Chief: Tim Hutton Website: www.PrivateMotor.Club Email: Hello@PrivateMotor.Club Created and printed in England

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MAX GIRARDO The most common question we hear in the office is ‘What shall I buy next?’

And the most common answer is ‘Buy what you love!’

Photos: Courtesy of Tom Gidden for Girardo & Co

Unfortunately, it seems our answer to the most common question doesn’t always satisfy our friends and clients, who call the London office from all over the word.

I can’t blame them; everyone knows what they love, but not everyone knows what the next best thing to buy is. And the ‘What shall I buy next?’ question is probably really asking ‘What is the next great thing to own?’

I don’t want to disappoint, but we don’t have the exact answer to that question. However, we do have a good idea of where things are going in the market and we’re always happy to share some knowledge.

As you know, at Girardo & Co., we have a soft spot, a passion (some call it an obsession) for rally cars, and it seems that rally cars from the late ’70s onwards are enjoying a resurgence in the market. With renewed interest in the sport and greater attention being paid to rally cars, the (less) obvious

(but related) place to look is ‘homologation specials’.

This covers a broad spectrum, but in general these cars must be road legal and be produced in limited numbers to meet governing bodies’ homologation requirements.

Racing homologation rules have produced some of the craziest cars to ever be sold that can be driven on public roads. In some cases, it’s hard to believe anyone was mad enough to build these cars at all (look at the Mercedes CLK GTR or Lancia Delta S4 Stradale, for example), but motorsport is known to inspire and it’s these crazy cars you should keep an eye on.

The very start of it all was probably the Alfa Romeo 33 Stradale.

It actually started off as a prototype racing car, which was then reverseengineered so it could compete in production-car racing. This car could be considered one of the first homologation specials and today is 12

certainly one of the most valuable Alfa Romeos in existence. Perhaps other homologation specials will follow in its footsteps going forward.

Officially, October 1974 saw the FIA homologation of the first ever homologation special, the Lancia Stratos HF. Another car we love, this was purpose-built to be homologated in Group 4, and at the time 500 examples were required to obtain homologation.

The Lancia Stratos changed the way car manufacturers approached racing. Instead of choosing a largescale production model and adapting it for motorsport, the Stratos was built as a rally car that was then adapted to the road for homologation with the FIA. The result is a car with avant-garde and modern styling coveted by collectors worldwide today.

Here are just a few of the great homologation specials to pay attention to: Ferrari 288 GTO, Renault 5 Turbo, Peugeot 205 T16, Ford Escort RS

Cosworth, BMW E30 M3, Mercedes 190E 2.3-16, Audi Sport Quattro, Ford Sierra Cosworth, Lancia 037 and Ford RS200.

Unfortunately, there’ll most probably never be a second run of homologation specials. Between emissions regulations, noise restrictions, safety legislation and today’s engines, cars have all become much of the same.

But there’s a glimmer of hope for homologation specials. The Toyota GR Yaris recently made its debut; this is a four-wheel-drive widearched hot hatchback, and as close as you can get to a ‘homologation special’ these days.

The three-door shell and bodywork are bespoke, the roof is lowered and made of carbon-fibre and best of all, it even has a manual gearbox.

The GR is to be produced at a specialised Gazoo Racing facility in Motomachi, Japan, using “a large number of manual processes” – which

in my opinion gives it even more street cred.

Homologation specials are a rare breed, with not many more than 30 or so models made in the last 60 years. So, our next answer to the most common question we hear in the office is going to be ‘Buy a homologation special’!

The best part of all this is that homologation specials range from US$100,000 all the way to the US$10 million range, so there really is something for everyone who wants to join the club.

What is the literal definition?

“Homologation is a technical term, derived from the Greek homologeo, which means ‘to agree’. It’s generally used in English to signify the granting of approval by an official authority.”

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HENLEY ON THAMES 1974 This fashion shoot for The Telegraph was shot by legendary photographer Brian Duffy and features a beautifully pure Giorgetto Giugiaro styled Alfa Romeo Alfasud. The models are Polo Churchill (left) and Christie (right). Is it the car or the models that steal the show though? It’s a hard one to call.

Photo Duffy © Duffy Archive

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Automotive travel, adventure, good people, journeys, personal stories, epic drives and most of all fun. These are the things that keep us going here at Private Motor Club. If that sounds like your idea of fun, too, then please support us with a subscription for 2020.

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FITTING IN WITH A S U RV I VA L I S T A SAM BURNETT EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW

I N T E R N AT I O N A L W O O D S M A N F O X B A K E R The Pike National Forest in Colorado, USA, contains over a million acres of tumbling mountains and dense woodland. But don’t let the picturesque views and rolling postcard-worthy landscape fool you – this is some of the most charmingly inhospitable territory on earth, with bears, fires and Americans around almost every corner.

We’re here for a particular purpose to meet a particular man, but we’ve rarely experienced anything like this in all our years of providing hot content on the latest products: to wit, the disappearance of our interview subject and the inability of the product to avoid hitting the local scenery.

We were supposed to meet renowned survivalist and international woodsman Fox Baker at his secret cave in Colorado and have him show us the sights in the exciting new Rampager off-roader from Italian tuning house Limone, but things ended up going what you might call ‘awry’.

Flashback to two days ago and we were ceremoniously waved off from the base of Pikes Peak in Colorado Springs by the winningly urbane Luigi, son of eponymous company founder Mateo Limone, who made his name performing ground-up sporting upgrades of Japanese kei cars and selling them back to the Japanese domestic market at a suitable Italian

premium. Oriental reliability and precision meets Euro flair.

Since Luigi’s takeover of the family business following his father’s untimely shower slip, the company has diversified, taking on military contracts to provide armoured vehicles to central African republics and Norway, designing the latest Popemobile for His Holiness Francis and presenting Prince George of Cambridge with a Jaguar XJ converted into a monster truck for his sixth birthday.

“Bring back our baby, safe and sound,” chuckled Limone at the departure spot. The Rampager is a bold gamble, he’d explained that morning over chicken and waffles, with suitably copious amounts of steaming black coffee getting poured as he did so.

The aim is to elevate a brand that’s already well known throughout the world for its efforts at ‘upscaling’ expensive luxury models into territory that’s literally off the beaten path. As it forms a new path that stretches out into the unknown, Limone is looking to the likes of Fox Baker to give it fasttrack credibility.

Baker has been appointed as a global ambassador for the European firm and helped to develop the Rampager with the company’s team of engineers. He claims the perforated kangaroo-leather shotgun hammock 18

in the rear storage compartment as his favourite innovation, inspired by a recent trip to Australia where he was attacked by a family of kangaroos while on safari in the Outback.

Baker literally wrote the book on how to live in holes, shooting to fame in 2013 when it turned out he’d been living in a self-built facility in Green Park opposite Buckingham Palace for three weeks without anyone noticing. Not since David Blaine’s box has a new-build London flat quite so captured the imagination.

He hasn’t been much of a stranger to controversy since then, hitting the headlines in Christmas 2015 after punching a zebra at Barnsley safari park while on a tour to promote his latest DVD. The stricken animal suffered a concussion and ended up needing 17 stitches. Baker told police that he’d felt the animal was about to cause trouble; the charges were later dropped.

It wasn’t a smooth path to our rendezvous with Baker. A freak patch of snow in the Pike peaks caught both me and the Rampager by surprise, the front end losing grip and regaining it suddenly as I mashed the accelerator, the 3.0-litre twin-turbo V8 petrol providing plenty enough power to see us through the corner and out the other side into an awkwardly positioned tree.

With no PR representatives and no mobile-phone coverage, it was difficult to decide what to do. Ultimately, I decided to press on towards where I’d been told Fox lives, some way further into the forest. Eking out rations became a difficult game of trying to guess when one might be saved from certain death, or when perhaps the blessed release of an early demise might best occur.

I first meet Baker after a second night sleeping in a tree hiding from bears, rocking myself to slumber gently without creating enough momentum to alert the massive beasts, or indeed to fall out of my precarious perch. I spent much of the night with eyes wide open, dwelling on the meaning of life and using up much of my battery life trying to crack a particularly difficult level that has always haunted me on Angry Birds.

“What in hell are you doing out here?” demanded Baker suddenly. I hadn’t been aware that I’d ventured close to his territory, making this encounter a happy accident. Of course, if the assault rifle he was carrying had gone off at that particular moment I would not have been able to call that a happy accident.

We could laugh at the situation minutes later, mind, as we drank tea Baker foraged from the local plant life.

“They asked me to jump out of a plane to promote this car, but I’m not an idiot. I did a skydive with Dame Helen Mirren for a cat charity last year and decided that I’d draw a line under that sort of thing,” he explained. “I prefer to keep my feet on the ground. Under the ground ideally.”

I’ve brought the Rampager’s carbon-fibre and Peruvian alpaca wool picnic hamper with me through the forest, saving the exquisite Prosecco for my eventual encounter with Fox. He doesn’t drink. But he’s happy to ‘chin chin’ with the vintage Waterford Crystal goblets, adding a splash of elderflower cordial to some purified river water, fresh from the peaks.

“I don’t often drive, but if I did the Limone Rampager would be my wagon of choice for negotiating the most hostile territories,” Baker told me, bleeding from a cut above his eye that

I didn’t even see him get. The ceilings can get low in this subterranean getaway place.

Fox Baker might have been lazy when digging the space, but he didn’t skimp on decking it out – this must be one of the few holes in the ground to enjoy LED strip lighting and airconditioning. Baker went on to explain that his Limone contract is paying for a septic tank (he currently bags it all and buries it downwind) and pizza oven.

Sadly, our time together was all

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too quickly up, as a Limone-uniformed helicopter pilot arrived on the scene to escort me back home to the relative safety of Colorado Springs.

Unfortunately, the closest he’d been able to land was four and a half miles northwest of our current point, but beggars can’t be choosers when you’re trying to return home to civilisation.

The new Rampager would be the perfect tool for such a job – especially if I had avoided being a tool myself and writing it off against that pine tree.

S S S S E E C C X X E E

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H-POWERED IG H Y, IT C D E T D A DEREGULA ACING AROUN R F O S IE R O T ND S N SUPERCARS A E A TIME WHE R E W S 0 8 9 1 LATE SSIBLE. THE M25. THE HING WAS PO T Y N A T A H T YUPPIES FELT ON CH AR LIE HU TT TT ON PH OT OS : WO RD S TIM HU

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When you imagine a piece of tarmac that loops around until it reconnects with itself, you automatically think of a racetrack, but on 29 October 1986, when Margret Thatcher officially opened the M25, I’m sure that thought couldn’t have been further from her mind.

However, the yuppies working hard and playing hard in the City of London knew exactly what the M25 was: a 117-mile racetrack.

Steeped in mythical stories, everyone has heard of meets that would happen late at night, but to this day, finding anyone to come forward and discuss the truth of these rumours, which have long spiralled around internet forums, has been nigh-on impossible. At that time I was just seven years old, and my brother would tell me stories of secret races being planned on motorways, like the ‘Severn Bridge Club’ who’d leave from London, with the first one to return bearing a stamped bridge receipt declared the winner.

Posters of the Ferrari Testarossa, Lamborghini Countach and Porsche 911 Turbo all adorned my wall.

My only personal point of reference were the Carrera Sport track days that used to happen at Goodwood circuit on Bank Holiday weekends. They were organised by Mike Pullen from Carrera Sport, a Lamborghini specialist based in West Sussex. The images in this feature are scanned copies of photographs taken by my brother at these events; as a seven-yearold, my photography skills had not yet matured!

First, let’s talk about those mythical ‘races’ around the M25. I have been told of a gentleman who lapped the motorway in around 45 minutes one evening in a Porsche 911 GT2. As far as I’m aware, this would stand as the ‘lap record’, 23

but there’s no place for this kind of effort in modern times, so instead of trying to beat it, let’s look back at those storied early days of the M25.

It opened just two days after the ‘Big Bang’, when the City of London was deregulated, instantly turning it into a financial capital to rival New York. The electrification of trading leapfrogged London ahead of its European rivals and the international banks came flocking.

The good times were rolling and the feeling of the moment was that anything was possible.

Our first port of call is a copy of The Times from Saturday 2 July 1988. A very young Boris Johnson reports on the story of a proposed race titled ‘The First London Cannonball Run’. The reality is that by the time young Boris had cottoned on, the times had already changed. Almost exactly a year after the M25 opened, Black Monday happened and values were wiped off both cars and juicy City bonuses.

Going back to 1986 and ’87, things were far more under the radar. Very few people in the City knew about these goings-on, as the circle was kept very tight. I talked to 10 people who worked in the City during the late ’80s and only two had heard of them.

The rumours and stories quickly spread around the car community, though. Back then, there was only one service station on the M25, at South Mimms. An obvious start and finish point, with a breather at the tollbooth for the Dartford tunnel – you just had to choose your lane wisely!

Some people will tell you it was a ‘first one back’ event, but talking to people who were there gives the impression it was more often than not a timed event, with anything under an hour being a badge of

IN 1991, THE FIRST CAMERA WAS INSTALLED ON THE M40 AND RECORDED 400 OFFENCES IN ITS FIRST 40 MINUTES OF OPERATION. THE DAYS OF ILLEGAL HIGH-SPEED RUNS WERE MOSTLY OVER

honour among colleagues. To achieve that, you’d need to average 117mph, and anyone who’s ever watched their average speed on a long journey will know exactly how hard it is to keep it high. At a time when the country’s prevailing mood was invincibility, it’s easy to imagine these young bloods getting their highs from flat-out drives around the M25 on hot summer evenings.

Working in the city in the mid-’80s, your first bonus would most likely be followed by a trip to the Alan Day Volkswagen dealership to get yourself a Golf GTI 16-valve. Alan Day was one of the few dealers in the City and the Golf GTI was the first step on the automotive ladder for the baby banker. From there, it was on to a Porsche 911 before stepping up to the Italian exotics.

During 1988 and ’89, small

adverts appeared in the Enfield Gazette for the ‘M25 Club’. The City stories had filtered down to general car enthusiasts, who were starting to try it out themselves.

Talking to a few friends over dinner, the stories start to roll out: “I did it flat-out in a tuned 3.0-litre Capri in the late ’80s,” said one.

“But we just timed ourselves, it wasn’t a race as such”.

Another piped up: “I had the first Escort Cosworth in the UK, and on the day it was delivered, I took it straight out to do a lap with friends as fast as I could”. By now, though, it was the early ’90s and the speed camera had arrived. In 1991, the first camera was installed on the M40 and recorded 400 offences in its first 40 minutes of operation. The days of illegal highspeed runs were mostly over.

That’s where the Carrera Sport trackdays come into it. Those who’d

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bought the dip or ferreted their bonus money away were still rolling around in supercars and a trackday was the perfect place to use their toy.

As a child visiting Goodwood regularly, I was aware of the etiquette with trackdays and sprints, but one hot August Bank Holiday, I can remember all hell breaking loose. Goodwood was far more relaxed back then; the circuit was nothing but the decayed remains of its 1960s glory days, yet to be transformed by the Duke of Richmond into a global hub for historic motorsports.

The day started off very well behaved. I can remember counting 11 Lamborghini Countaches, the place was packed and word had got around that if you headed up to Goodwood, you’d see some seriously exotic cars. Shortly after lunch in the searing heat, a Ferrari 308 GT4 spun out at the chicane and crashed

in to the tyre wall. On impact, the rear numberplate had fallen off to reveal a different numberplate underneath!

One guy had let his friend out in his brand-new Lamborghini Diablo; he pranged it, and the friendly gesture quickly turned heated. By this point, the queueing system had also gone out of the window; people were just driving past the queue and straight out on to the track. All hell had truly broken loose. It was great fun to watch as a youngster, unaware of the dangers but fully enthralled by the excitement of this hot summer day.

The excess and disregard for safety shown by the young and wealthy in the ’80s and ’90s continues to fascinate me to this day. There’s no way any of this could take place now, and anyone who forgets that quickly gets shut down.

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THE DUFFY ARCHIVE Duffy first came to prominence during the swinging sixties when Duffy together with fellow fashion photographers David Bailey & Terence Donovan took the photo’s that shaped the decade.

Travelling worldwide and shooting for all the top fashion glossies and the newly launched Sunday Magazines he became as well known as the celebrities he photographed. In 1973 he shot David Bowie for the Aladdin Sane album cover with the lightning bolt across his face which was the lead image for the V&A’s ‘David Bowie is’. More recently Duffy’s photo for Vogue with the E-type Jaguar on the M1 motorway was the lead image for the V&A ‘Cars:Accelerating the Modern World’ exhibition.

These photo’s and many more are included in a wealth of imagery in the second publication of Duffy’s Monograph book.

For a limited time signed editions by Chris Duffy are available from the archive at £45 with the option to add an open-edition mounted photographic print of the models with the Alphasud car for an additional £99 (RRP £125) + p&p Full details on www.duffyarchive.com/store/ Limited edition and larger open edition prints can be quoted for upon request.

SPECIAL PROMOTION FOR PRIVATE MOTOR CLUB MEMBERS

ARCHIVE EMBOSSED MOUNTED PRINT www.duffyarchive.com

DUFFY SECOND EDITION MONOGRAPH

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DA KA R

Dakar. A name that’s now more famous than the actual location, the most westerly point in Africa, thanks to the French adventurer Thierry Sabine. When he got lost in Algeria in 1977, he realised that the huge open expanse of the Tenere desert was the perfect location for a huge motor race, mixed with huge adventure.

Words:Toby Moody Photos: Alamy / Nissan / Mini

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EARLY DAYS What a great idea it would be, Sabine thought, to have a race from the Eiffel Tower to Dakar, via Algeria, Niger, Mali and Senegal. Just consider that for a moment: over 6,000 miles through the desert with a map and a compass, sleeping under the stars, little communication (if any) and the threat of huge sandstorms among a myriad of potential dangers. It’s hard to imagine how – even in those days of no ‘elf n’ safety’ – such a crazy idea could come to fruition.

Driving on the first event in 1979, little did the 29-year-old Sabine know that, 40 years later, his idea would have become a global phenomenon, yet to be equalled in size, adventure, danger and emotion by any other sporting event.

By its fourth year, the number of

entries had doubled, with the forceful Frenchman enticing huge names and manufacturers on two and four wheels to get involved; they quickly saw the opportunity to get themselves on the front pages, held up as ‘the toughest of the tough’.

The might of Peugeot lapped up the challenge when its defunct Group B cars were parked up in Paris with nothing to do. A bigger fuel tank was installed to ‘stretch’ the 205 T16 and let Kankkunen, Vatanen and Jean Todt weave their magic and… boy did it look cool with Camel sponsorship. It morphed into the 405 T16; never the prettiest of road cars, but again, with Dakar dust, a huge rear wing and a spare tyre on the roof, it gave fans something to get hooked into and enjoy a continuation of the Group B 32

rallying that had stopped at the end of 1986.

And it wasn’t just about the glory.

Bamako in Mali is a bivouac forever written into rally-raid history, for it was there in 1988 that Vatanen’s Peugeot was stolen by a local in the middle of the night. There was a demand for 25 million French francs (£2.5m) for its return, only for it to be found in a field come daybreak. Quite how someone could steal a prototype rally car from a service area, figuring out how to start it, doesn’t add up to me; those who were there suspect it may have returned with new parts that enabled the Finn to continue at the top end. I did say it was Wacky Races!

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little did the 29-yearold Sabine know that, 40 years later, his idea would have become a global phenomenon, yet to be equalled in size, adventure, danger and emotion

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GETTING THE CALL I had posters of that car on my wall as a lad, so when I got a call from the organisers in late 2000 asking if I’d do the commentary on the 30-minute highlight programme made every day, I jumped at the chance. I remember the boss of the TV department asking me “are you okay sleeping in a tent?” I later found out they’d had some people the year before who were a bit, how can I say, precious about getting dirty and sleeping in a bivouac.

It was a truly tremendous experience, the first WTF moment being in the Narbonne Hotel de Ville square one afternoon as the tapes came

in from the short stage and the edit was put together for the satellite slot for the highlights to creep up on us. I was led outside to a Mercedes van and plonked into the passenger seat with a TV monitor of about six inches square in front of me. “Go on. Go!” said the head of TV and the feed started to flash across the screen… this was it: voice the whole edited programme in one go, trying not to fluff my lines. This was adrenaline, and I bloody loved it.

In 2003, we went from Marseille to Sharm El Sheikh, and that was another one for the adventure list, as six of the most important TV guys crammed

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into a small Cessna and flew over the Mediterranean to Tunis late on New Year’s Eve. Among them was the main man of French TV, Gerard Holtz who was essentially France’s Steve Rider or Des Lynam for decades, but he excelled himself on that flight as midnight approached, pulling out bottles of Moet and a platter of food fit for Versallies.

Utterly hilarious, but completely French. That year also took us through Libya (I kept my head down) where the incredible dunes with differentcoloured sands making them look like huge cappuccinos were sights to behold for life.

in my mind the rally is about the top 20; after that, it’s a race to just get to the finish THE FORMAT The Dakar is contested by motorcycles, quads, cars, trucks and SSVs (side-byside vehicles), with the crews starting the stage in the order of the stage result the day before, so if you won yesterday, you have to open the stage today. You follow your sat nav, which gives you headings towards a circular waypoint that you have to enter for the GPS to recognise you’re there. On that confirmation, the navigation tells you where to go next, and so on.

If you miss a waypoint, you get clobbered with time penalties that essentially put you out of contention, but with bikes starting two minutes apart, he who opens the stage usually gets caught because of his dust cloud and tracks in the sand, so it’s a game of cat and mouse.

Rising at dawn to get into a helicopter is the one opportunity not to be missed, to get to stage start before

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skipping over the bikes to wait for them somewhere down stage. We landed on top of a dune quite literally in the middle of nowhere, with nothing but dunes as far as the eye could see in every direction. The solitude was humbling and made me realise that, even back in 2003, it wasn’t all about the speed of your internet connection.

Rules can be hugely difficult to enforce on the Dakar due to its enormity, but in my mind the rally is about the top 20; after that, it’s a race to just get to the finish. Finishers only get a small Dakar Tuareg trophy, but many a grown man cries with relief, absolute exhaustion and pride at this moment. I’m sure the organisers turn a blind eye to who-doeswhat, but who cares… a prime example was French music icon Johnny Hallyday, who got to the finish with a few engine changes – but did it matter? Most of France was following him on live TV!

ROLL OF HONOUR Dakar winners are all heroes, but only one is the king: Stephane Peterhansel – six times a winner on a bike and seven times in a car. It’s as if he has a sixth sense for reading terrain even better than the Tuaregs and their camels can, for if you can survive on a bike and win that many times, you’re something special; if you fall off a bike at full pelt, you’re far more likely to seriously hurt yourself than a MotoGP rider doing double the speed.

WRC icon Colin McRae wanted to follow Kankkunen and Vatanen to Dakar victory, and boy did he give it a go, with stage wins for BMW and Nissan, but the race did bite him with a hugely unlucky off: such was the deceleration involved that he damaged his sight.

Jean-Louis Schlesser drove Group C Mercedes at Le Mans, but for Dakar he built his own buggy and beat the big guys twice. He was a renegade and would’ve gelled well with Sabine, but Schlesser’s simple thinking and mechanical aptitude were the keys, whereas the huge budget of Porsche brought the 911 and the 959 in Rothmans colours to the top step in the 80s.

Then there was the darling of France, Luc Alphand, who won the Skiing World Cup and the Hahnenkamm Downhill, and then went on to win the Dakar when Mitsubishi was in its pomp, before six months later finishing third in his class at the Le Mans 24 hours. That’s pretty cool.

THE CURRENT ERA In recent years, turbodiesel torque has proven better through the dunes than the outright power of petrol V6s and V8s, leaving the whirling oil-burners to win 11 of the last 12 editions of the Dakar. However, there’s a sporting battle at present in the Rally Raid discipline between Nasser Al-Attiyah and Carlos Sainz, two legends of world sport from rallying and clay shooting (where the Qatari has won an Olympic medal).

There’s nothing between them on the stages, despite them driving two completely different cars: a four-wheeldrive V8-engined Toyota Hilux for Nasser and a rear-wheel-drive turbodiesel buggy

(Peugeot, and now MINI) for Carlos. It’s a battle of more traction but more weight against less traction but less weight, making for a wonderful cat-and-mouse game from stage to stage. Sainz is quicker on the technical twistys, whereas AlAttiyah’s desert knowledge is second to none at that speed. To date it’s Spain 3, Qatar 2 on the Dakar.

On two wheels, there have been two eras of Yamaha, BMW and Honda winning, but Austrian brand KTM has been most dominant, winning 18 on the trot with a 660 single, a 950 twin, a 690 twin and a 450 single, and becoming synonymous with success in the desert in the process. But 40

2020 saw it toppled by Honda and the first American to win in any class on the Dakar, Ricky Brabec, making that link between the Baja 1000 and the Dakar that so many from the States have attempted. Might the floodgates now open?

I’m not French, but I’ve worked on five Dakars in Africa and two in South America, during which time I learnt a great deal about the journey, from Thierry Sabine’s “what if?” vision back in the late 1970s to its current status as a 21st-century global event.

Sabine died in a helicopter crash in 1986 while on his beloved rally. His ashes are spread around the remote Tree of the Tenere in the Sahara, near to where he got lost in 1977. Around the base of the tree is a plaque bearing words that will be forever connected with rally-raid royalty, and that sum up the Dakar better than any other.

“For those who go, a challenge. For those who stay, a dream.”

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LOST ON THE DAKAR WORDS: ADAM HAY-NICHOLLS PHOTOS: ALAMY

The year was 1982. The British Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, rerouted an RAF Hercules over foreign territory and requested the scrambling of jets and choppers and ground troops. The diplomatic cables burned back and forth. President Reagan expressed concern. The situation was desperate.

This wasn’t the Falklands War – that came a few months later. This, in fact, may have been more emotional for the Iron Lady. Her only son, 29-year-old Mark, had gone missing.

A privileged and rather bored young man who’d failed his accountancy exams three times, Mark Thatcher was searching for some meaning in life and caught the motor-racing bug. He’d competed in the Le Mans 24 Hours, and

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it was with extemporaneousness and a side order of hubris that he took on the very different and more dangerous challenge of the Paris-Dakar with little more than bravado and a rudimentary compass.

The rally was very much in its infancy. Mark couldn’t remember he’d even agreed to compete. “It all began when I took part in Le Mans in 1980,” he wrote in The Guardian in 2004. “One of the sponsors happened to mention they were running three Peugeots in the Paris-Dakar, and would I like to do it? I said yes and forgot all about it”. It was this level of groundwork that led to navigational errors, life-threatening thirst and an international rescue mission.

When the sponsor rang back a year and a half later with Mark’s ticket to Paris, our automotive adventurer decided that though his memory of agreeing to race was hazy, it might be fun to try and cross the Sahara.

His lack of care and concern was almost admirable. Even the amateur competitors rigorously prepare for months, if not years, in advance, mentally and physically as well as technically and strategically. “I did absolutely no preparation. Nothing”. He did half a day’s testing and the day after that was driving out of Paris’ Place de la Concorde in the direction of Senegal.

It was New Year’s Day, 1982. Mark’s role for the three-week mission was to be the navigator. His driver was experienced Porsche racer and Le Mans class winner Anne-Charlotte Verney, who was 10 years Thatcher’s senior, and they had an on-board mechanic, Jacky Garnier. Thatcher hadn’t actually finished Le Mans in his two attempts, and one might argue that the 8.5-mile-long Circuit de la Sarthe requires minimal map-reading skills, but that didn’t stop him feeling cocksure about the desert raid. “I’ve now raced in Le Mans and other

things,” Mark told the BBC, “this rally is no problem.”

Well, the first problem was the car itself. Their Dangel-converted Peugeot 504 estate had a very long wheelbase, while the harsh terrain of the Sahara lends itself better to short-wheelbase machines. “I was thinking, okay, I wonder how this is going to go?” wrote Thatcher with typical forethought. “I soon found out.”

At Sète, the cars boarded a transport ship to Algiers and left the safety of France behind. Two days later, on 4 January, the Algerian stages began. Algiers to Ouled Djellal; Ouled Djellal to Hassi Messauod; Hassi Messauod to Bordj Omar Driss; Bordj Omar Driss to Tit. Where is Tit? An unkind guide might have pointed to the navigator of the white 504. With each mile south, the terrain got tougher and the nightly tales in the bivouac, the temporary village in which the teams camped, grew more lurid. “I remember thinking, two days before we stopped” wrote Thatcher, “that this could all go very badly wrong”.

Saturday 9 January saw the raid travel in convoy towards the dunes and desolate mountains of Timeaouine, 44

close to the border with Mali. Thatcher, Verney and Garnier never made it. “We must have hit something,” reflected Thatcher. “What actually happened was the trailing-arm links both broke; so the rear axle just broke away. We stopped. Others stopped too, took note of where we were and went on. But the silly bastards – instead of telling everyone we were 25 miles east when they finished the section, they told them we were 25 miles west.”

The “silly bastards” soon had a cold Kronenbourg in their hands and their feet up in the bivouac, while Thatcher had no GPS, no satellite phone or locator beacon, and had to explain to his team-mates why they only had a half-full water container. “There was not a lot in the car. I remember being slightly annoyed, in fact, at the way the rally organisers arranged the water truck every day. I learned quickly that you should get to the truck quite fast.

For some reason, I got to the camp late the night before and couldn’t fill up. So, we had five litres of water – instead of 10 – between the three of us”. They rationed themselves half a polystyrene cup each twice a day, and were soon having to drink the radiator

THATCHER DID HAVE AN UNCOMMON NAVIGATIONAL AID AT HIS DISPOSAL, THOUGH; A PARENT WHO WAS PREMIER OF A G8 NATION. water. There was a small amount of dried food, which Thatcher described as “useless.”

The number-one rule when it comes to getting stuck in the Sahara is to stay with your vehicle. They remained there for six days. Unsurprisingly, there was some strain felt. “The thing I did not understand,” Verney later told the BBC, “is [Mark] could not find where we were. With all the machines, he said, “I can’t find [our location]”. That’s the only thing that made me angry”.

Mark claims to have been positively zen about the whole ordeal. “When they didn’t come back for us in the first day I remember planning [psychologically]

to be out there for five days, then for a week. I was never scared for my life.”

Thatcher did have an uncommon navigational aid at his disposal, though; a parent who was premier of a G8 nation. Without a radio, Mark had no idea of the fuss brewing at home as soon as it was reported he’d been missing for three days. Half of Fleet Street was now in the nearby town of Tamanrasset and the other half were trying to fly down there. His father Denis was there, too.

A distressed Mrs Thatcher telephoned the British ambassador in Algiers. “I’m afraid there is no news,” she strained to tell TV reporters.

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‘Maggie’s Son Lost in Sahara’ cried the front page of The Sun. ‘Fears Grow For Lost Mark’ headlined The Daily Express. Ronald Reagan rang from The White House: “I was calling to tell you that Nancy and I feel so deeply – you are in our thoughts and prayers, you and Denis – about Mark.”

The Algerian military assigned five aircraft to the search, and the French government scrambled an additional three. The Algerian colonel commanding the operation was, according to Denis Thatcher, “a remarkable soldier who quite clearly knew what he was about”. On Thursday 14 January, after six days lost in the

IT QUICKLY EMERGED THAT HE’D RISKED EVERYTHING BY TAKING WHAT APPEARED TO BE A SHORTCUT ON THE MAP desert, the team and their stricken Peugeot were spotted, 31 miles off course. “The Algerians had a well organised, well structured plan,” wrote Mark. “Ground assets and air assets.

It was coordinated with ground-toair radios. I heard a Herc in a search pattern, fired a flare and within five minutes two Land Rovers appeared.”

War reporter Michael Nicholson was down there for ITN. Addressing the News at Ten, he reported: “Mark Thatcher and his French co-driver were sighted this morning by an Algerian Air Force C130 search plane only a few miles from the border with Mali.

As the pilot returned to the rescue headquarters at Tamanrasset, he was embraced by Mr Denis Thatcher, Mark’s father. He seemed overcome with emotion when the pilot told him he’d flown over the stranded car so low he could see the couple waving shirts and handkerchiefs at him. Once the sighting had been confirmed, Mr Thatcher telephoned the Prime Minister in London to tell her the good news.

Afterwards, he said, “you’ve got a very

relieved mum and dad.”

“It’s all alright now,” stated the Prime Minister, “and life to me looks totally different personally from what it did two days ago. It puts your other personal worries into perspective.”

For Mark’s part, he seemed pretty unaffected, telling reporters that all he needed was “a beer and a sandwich, a bath and a shave.”

But while the nation was relieved, soon Mark became a butt of jokes.

It quickly emerged that he’d risked everything by taking what appeared to be a shortcut on the map, instead of keeping to the known and used tracks going due south. The Dakar organisers blamed it on Thatcher’s inexperience, while Mark has laid responsibility at their door. “It’s not to suggest that the rally organisers were not doing their very best to find us, but the event was still young and they were still learning their craft. Having said that, I can’t remember a year when someone wasn’t killed.”

There was one further part of this debacle that Mrs Thatcher had 46

to weather. The dinner celebrating Mark and his team-mates’ safe return was largely liquid, generous and very expensive, and the bill hadn’t been paid when they left the Tahat Hotel in Tamanrasset. The local police and the British Embassy had to get involved.

Eventually, Mark’s mother wrote a personal cheque for £1,784.80 to cover the hotel bill and keep both the Algerian and UK taxpayers happy.

It wasn’t to be Sir Mark Thatcher’s last scrape. There have been controversial arms deals, dubious offshore banking activities and even a failed coup d’état in Equatorial Guinea, for which he received a four-year suspended prison sentence. It might be best if he stayed away from continental Africa and deserts in general. On the other hand, one is reminded of Margaret Thatcher’s press secretary, the bountifully eyebrowed Sir Bernard Ingham, who, when asked by Mark what he could do to help his mother win a third successive general election in 1987, responded: “Leave the country.”

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MADNESS MADNESS ON ON WHEELS WHEELS Tim Hutton chats with Philip Kadoorie about the East African Safari Classic Rally Photos: McKlein

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Tim: So Philip, how did taking part in the East African Safari Classic Rally last year come about?

Philip: As you know, a few years ago I bought a Lancia Stratos and did Tour Auto, that’s when we first met. I got the rally bug and that was it. It bit hard and I was like, ‘It’s not just racing that I want to do, now it’s rallying, too, because this is really cool’.

Right after Tour Auto finished, I was actually here in the Peninsula Paris.

I’d flown back from Nice where we finished and I was about to fly to Hong Kong, but I had one night in Paris and I was still feeling pretty energetic. I thought ‘I’m going to look up what the world’s best rallies are’. And what comes up but Tuthill’s video on YouTube, 45 minutes of the East Africa Safari rally. I’m like, ‘I need to do that!’

And that’s how it began.

T: So your fantastic-looking 911 Safari that you now have, that wasn’t even on the radar at that point, until you saw that video?

P: At the time, I think it was getting more interesting to have a Safari car.

I don’t think Leh Keen was doing his thing with his cars yet, but I think Luftgekühlt had auctioned one Safari car, or were just about to. They were doing the press for that car. I knew Tuthill had been doing them for a while, but I didn’t know anyone at Tuthill. And I thought that would be quite a cool Porsche to have, if you were going to have a funky 911, because I didn’t really want to plonk down the cash for a 2.7 RS. And the GT3 RS didn’t excite me that much. So it’s like, what car do you want? Because a 911 is a special thing and I think a garage should have a 911.

T: Absolutely, yeah.

P: We’re in agreement, then?

T: We are 100% in agreement on that one! Yes, it should. Totally cool cars, whichever flavour you choose. So you then got in contact with Tuthill and set the wheels in motion?

P: Yeah. I went down there to talk about Safari cars, always saying, ‘my goal is to do East Africa. I have no rally experience, other than having fun on Tour Auto. I’m a very novice driver. Teach 50

me. I’m competitive. I’m not there just to have a laugh. I want to go and win.’

And he says, ‘You’re not going to win.’

But, he says, ‘You have the ability to win, but you’re not going to win.’ And I really couldn’t understand that.

I put that off to the side and said, ‘Well, let’s build the car first.’ And we started this process. You could choose a bodystyle. Did you want a winged car, like the Alméras cars with the bolt-on wide fenders? Or you could have the RS style, with the ducktail. Or you could even go ST, without a ducktail. And I thought that would’ve been quite cool.

But if I was going to have a Porsche, it was going to be the Porsche I always wanted. So it was going to be RS-style, quite narrow, with the little flares and the ducktail.

I like to give cars a personality, a character of their own. I don’t think I talk to cars, but I pat them. I like to work with the car and I always find it easier to work with a car if it has a name. My McLaren 650S is nicknamed Fat Bird. I think the official name is Project Kilo, because McLaren did the Project Alpha cars for Chicago or something like that. But Henry

Winkworth-Smith, who used to work at McLaren, he always called the Fat Kiwi, the Fat Bird, and that name just stuck; we always called it that.

So I was like, ‘Yeah, cars need to have names.’ And the name we ended up choosing was Bandit, but there’s a good story later as to how we got that.

I thought it needed to have an interesting paint scheme to differentiate itself. If you can’t do anything with the interior, if you can’t really do anything with the spec, how do you make it interesting? So it becomes known as something outside of your ownership. So then I thought, let’s do a historic scheme. I started looking at historic schemes and just realised they’d been so overused. Everyone does the same schemes over and over again. And it’s not that they’re bad, they’re used because they’re great.

And in some applications, they look spectacular. For example, I loved seeing Vanina (a good friend)’s Safari-spec manual 991.1 4 GTS take on the GP Ice Race; that car wears the Rothmans livery so well.

On the rally there was a wrapped

Rothmans car, and other cars similar in style to that. To me, it’s a little overplayed in that generation. So I thought, let’s take a historic Porsche livery that was never on one of these cars, and we went with the Zakspeed 911 GT1. I even tried to get Jever beer to sponsor me in beer that I could give to the lads at the end of each day, but sadly they weren’t up for it.

T: It’s a real triumph. Did it surprise you, just how well the livery fits the car?

Or did you know that straight away it was going to look great?

P: Actually, the first thing I wanted to do, before we did that, was a sand kind of colour. I really wanted to take an Afrika Korps Me 109, and somehow apply that to the car. Imagine white fenders, black-and-white Fuchs and a sand colour, with maybe a little bit of white accenting. I thought it would all look really cool.

But they all said, ‘You’re going to get lost in Africa. If you crash, no-one’s gonna find you.’ And I was like, ‘Yeah, okay, that’s a pretty good point.’ I then thought we needed a colourful roof, 51

and the Zakspeed car worked. NS2 Media, who I found on Instagram, they did maybe 40 renders for me, first of different variations on the scheme, and then different colour options, because we didn’t think of just going straight to the Zakspeed colours. And we ended up not quite matching them. We went with something slightly different. British Racing Green, Mars Red and Grand Prix White, which I think really punches on the car. I love it. I think it worked out spectacularly well.

T: Yeah, it really is mega. So once that had been built, you ventured off up to Scotland to do some testing?

P: A friend of mine did a rally for 10 of us, three days up in Scotland, on some of the best roads. And I thought, ‘I’ve got the perfect car for this.’ It was hilarious, Marino Franchitti was there in a new Alpine A110, which I think is a fantastic car. He had the suspension travel and it’s light weight, so he was flying. There were also a couple of P1s and a 997 GT2 RS, and they were definitely having trouble keeping up with us, because we could fly down the Scottish roads not worrying

about anything. On my second day of ownership, I forded a river. It was really fun.

After I did the shakedown in Scotland, I took delivery and just wanted to get familiar with the car. I went and did an ice-driving experience with Tuthill in Sweden, which I loved, and that gave me a bit of confidence. Richard [Tuthill] heard from the instructors I drove with that I wasn’t a terrible driver and I could be taught. And so he sat me with Ryan Champion. Ryan actually co-won the Safari two years ago. He has a lot of rally experience, but he also has Africarally experience.

So they put us together for him to teach me, but also to see how we worked as a pair. I think Ryan realised he could teach me, he could sit next to me. I also realised I could sit next to him, because you know, nine days is a lot of time, plus testing beforehand in-country. You end up getting very closely bonded. You go to eat together. You wake up. You go to bed. Everything you’re doing, it’s all happening together, because you’re on the same schedule. The only thing I wasn’t part of was when he’d go to do the next day’s route planning, because

they give you the route the night before.

I did three days of testing with him.

He showed me a lot of things that I was doing wrong and taught me how I could improve. And then we did our first competitive rally in the car, in Wales.

That went very badly.

I was told if I didn’t slow down, I’d roll it. First stage, about three minutes in, what did I do? I rolled it. And there’s some pretty tragic photos of the car, up on two wheels and then all the way over. And it was a really tough thing for me to understand, because I felt you had to go flat out to win a rally. And I’d watched rally drivers and they were always going flat out, and I didn’t feel like I was going that fast.

Then you realise you’re going too fast and it’s too late. We came round a right-hand corner that declined in radius, but that wasn’t the big issue.

The big issue was that there was a big bank on the outside of the corner and I dropped a wheel into it trying to turn through it too fast. It caught the wheel and we flipped over, rolled, and ended up on all fours.

My immediate reaction was to look 52

over to Ryan after I did a kind of selfcheck and ask, ‘Are you all right?’ And Ryan’s response was, ‘Engine on. First gear. Go!’ I’m shaken, and he says, ‘Engine on. First gear. Go!’ And so, clutch, start, first gear. Stripping first gear as I do it. And now we’re going flat-out through the gears, second and third, and the car isn’t straight and the windscreen is cracked. And I’m trying to say to him, as he’s still trying to give me pace notes, ‘Hey dude, I think we’ve got a puncture.’ He’s like, ‘Drive through it.’ Then I say to him, ‘I think we’ve got two punctures.’ He’s like, ‘You definitely have two punctures.

Keep going.’

We get to the end of the stage, we finish the stage and that’s the only stage we complete that day unfortunately. We came 30th out of 60, despite rolling. And we still beat the other Tuthill Porsche that we were rallying against!

Unfortunately, we were only carrying one spare, so we couldn’t continue. It was a real disappointment. It was a wake-up call. It definitely gave me some thinking to do about going to Africa.

T: So, talk us through Africa. How many days is the event?

P: It’s supposed to be nine days. I went out there four days in advance to go testing. Everything leads up to Africa. I planned this a year in advance, when I knew I was going to go, because to get two weeks out of the calendar is not easy.

Not having driven a rally car since July on the dirt was definitely another thing I was thinking about. To have psychologically prepared for the GT street race in Macau, three weeks beforehand, and gone and done well there, definitely put me on a high, but I knew it was a different discipline. And to think that I brought my parents to watch me at Macau, one of the most dangerous races that’s known for crashes… And then to be like, ‘Bye. I’m off to Africa now,’ was pretty interesting.

But we get to Africa and it’s nice to see the car. It’s amazing to see the team. The set up is pretty special.

And we start testing, and the thing that everyone keeps telling me is that Björn Waldegård said, ‘If you think you’re going slowly, slow down.’ Now, to you and your readers, this will mean

nothing. Because, what do you mean, ‘If you think you’re going slowly, slow down’? We’re here to win! But this is a long rally. Equate it to a 24-hour race, where a novice driver goes out in the first 15 minutes, racing like it’s an hour’s sprint and damages the car.

And the other drivers, plus that guy, now have to deal with 23 hours with a broken steering rack, where you’re driving with the wheel at 12 to six rather than nine to three.

That’s the kind of mistake they’re talking about. But it’s very hard to explain that to someone when you’re going to do nine days and 3,500 kilometres, plus testing before that. Plus whatever else comes your way, because it might get extended a little bit. The routes may change. All kinds of things.

We do testing and I’m told I’m going too quickly. And it’s really hard to slow yourself down from going too quickly, but it’s very easy to go too fast. Because when you do a test loop, it’s like a circuit.

Eventually you learn it. And you just start going quicker and quicker. And that’s not what you’re supposed to do.

So anyone who goes to a rally school 53

and says, ‘Oh, I think I’m hot shit. I’ve learned this.’ You’re not, because you’ve learned the loop. You haven’t learned how to drive a rally car. I still don’t think I know how to drive a rally car. I drove a rally car well, on certain stages, and Ryan said to me, ‘You were driving like a rally driver a couple of times.’ He didn’t say it the whole rally. And I certainly didn’t do it the whole rally. But it’s a tough thing to do.

T: Obviously, you’re naturally competitive and you want to win. How do you make that mental adjustment to pull yourself back a bit from wanting to push on harder?

P: You make a mistake… So testing goes well. We have no problems. Day one, stage one, let’s go. I’m ready. I probably should’ve gotten there a day before the rally, done only a little bit of testing and been nervous. But I’d done four days of testing and I was confident. And I’m like, ‘throw it at me, Africa.’ And it did. Kenya and Tanzania are where the rally’s run, unfortunately in November, when the weather’s supposed to be fantastic, they were experiencing torrential downpours.

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A N Y O N E W H O G O E S T O A R A L LY S C H O O L A N D S AY S , “ O H , I T H I N K I ’ M H O T S H I T. I ’ V E L E A R N E D T H I S . ” Y O U ’ R E N O T, BECAUSE YOU’VE LEARNED THE L O O P. Y O U H AV E N ’ T L E A R N E D H O W T O D R I V E A R A L LY C A R

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So, the first stage, we start, we’re having a strong run and I put one wheel wrong and it pulls the car into a ditch off to the side of the road. The ditch must’ve been about five-and-a-half feet deep. And we fall into the ditch and Ryan is over the intercom screaming, ‘Second gear. Keep going.’ And I’m doing my best to hold the car straight, but the ditch isn’t wide enough for the car and the car ends up driving up and getting stuck halfway up the road and halfway in the ditch. And I just think, ‘Well, that’s the end of our rally. Stage one. I’ve already cocked it up. What a disappointment!’

Ryan tries to get out, but his door is very badly damaged, so he has to come through my door. We both pull out and Ryan’s thinking, ‘It’s done. We’re going to have to wait for the sweeper crew to pull us out. And then, we’ve taken the maximum penalty for the stage. Not a great way to start.’ And I’m thinking, ‘Now I understand this whole “slow down” thing. This is how I’ve tempered my driving.’

Thankfully, there were a bunch of Kenyans standing on the side of the road, quite near to where we were.

They ran over and I thought, ‘I’m not

going to give up on this car yet.’ And one of our team goes past us, really lovely people, but we didn’t have a rope on the car. There was no way they were going to pull us out easily, so they kept going. And I go and sit my weight on the front bumper and it starts to move. And then I start swinging from the front bumper to try and pull the car down, and eventually we get a couple of the Kenyans to help us, and about five of us manage to pull this car back down. And then I get behind it and they all help, and Ryan gets in the driver’s seat and he goes full throttle, wrecking my brand-new gear that’s all shiny. I’m fully caked at this point, covered in dust. And these poor guys who’ve helped us are also covered in dust. We push the car out and we get it up on the road. He gets back into the co-driver’s seat and I get back in. We start going. The car’s undamaged. Off we go. And we finish the stage. That’s what tempered me for the rest of the rally.

T: Driving on loose surfaces, learning about how you move the weight around the car, I’ve always found that fascinating when I’ve been lucky 56

enough to go ice driving. How you manage that weight distribution to get yourself round corners. I presume, that translates into loose surface as well?

P: It does and I think it’s exaggerated by the pogo-stick suspension on a Safari car. You get much more of that pitch and roll. Eventually you get used to it and start getting the weight transfer right and the car just sets. And you wouldn’t believe the speed you can carry across the dirt. You’re sitting there, never having driven that road before, with notes you didn’t make, that somebody handed you. There’s a lot of trust there.

Sometimes your navigator falls off.

Ryan did a pretty great job, but there were a few times where he fell off and, to be fair to him, he found his way back onto the notes. But you’re doing 180 kilometres an hour, over blind crests and you’re just told ‘flat crest’. What’s on the other side?

You see guys down the road, standing in the road. They’re gonna run and split just like in the Group B days. But it’s like, how do you keep your foot in when you’re driving at people, and

it’s loose? What happens if you have something go wrong? These things stick out in your mind.

clawed back two minutes. The next day we’re about eight minutes in the lead on a 170-kilometre stage.

I learned some lessons and we started going faster, and we started having fewer incidents. The second day we stopped having incidents, which was great. Knock on wood, there was a lot of that. We were getting through stages clean on the third day. The fourth day was cancelled, because of floods. So, at the end of the third day, we went into our rest day, day five, in third place.

I feel the pressure, because the guy is a phenomenal driver called Onkar Rai. He’s done the rally many times. This is my second-ever rally, and I’m sitting in a place that I do not deserve to be in, and people are reminding me, gently and nicely, that I probably don’t deserve to be there.

T: Wow! P: Ryan gave me a massive hug. We couldn’t believe it. People had fallen out in front of us and people were pushing on too hard. They weren’t driving slowly enough.

There was a big gap to first and second.

Kris Rosenberger and Stig Blomqvist.

Pretty amazing drivers, who were trading for first. I couldn’t believe it.

And it built up a false confidence.

Now, our chief rivals on day six were about 10 minutes behind us. They

We get a call for a fast jump. I was doing probably 160, and we slowed down to maybe 140 when we hit it.

It should have been a caution jump.

I should’ve slowed down more. But the car pitched heavily and instead of landing on the wheels, we landed on the front bumper. We landed with quite an uncomfortable hit, the car was revving really high, the clutch was gone. I couldn’t get the car to stop revving even though I was off the throttle. It was out of gear. Everything felt wrong.

And then we realised we’d bent the car in half. It had gone from being level to looking like a triangle. And we’d bent both throttle cables, so 57

they were pulling in. That’s why the throttle was buzzing, it was about 40 to 50% throttle on. I had to lift my right foot over the transmission tunnel by undoing my belts and pull the throttle back with my toes. And we had to flick the ignition on and off in third gear to get moving, and to get the car to work.

Third was all we had.

The stage had 50 kilometres left and we managed to get through it. It was the hardest driving I’ve ever had to do. You imagine going through mud, where even in a good car it’s tricky.

But to do it with a car that’s broken, that you’re not sitting in correctly, that you’re pulling the throttle back to slow yourself down.

Thankfully, Ryan was working the handbrake and helping me pivot the car around the trees we were avoiding hitting. It was really tough. We got to the end of the stage and I went for the brakes and the brakes were shot.

They were fried, so the pedal went to the floor and we went 100 meters past the checkpoint. I’m in pain, we’ve got an onboard video that I’ve just received, and I fully expect to see me complaining quite a lot through that.

Ryan runs back to the checkpoint and then he worked the throttle on the way to the service area. The guys at service can’t believe the car is still driving.

Unfortunately, in that stage, we lost our eight-minute lead, and we lost three more minutes. So we were 11 minutes behind.

But then we spent two more days chasing. I think we finished two minutes behind them. And to come fourth in my first Safari, and I do hope to go back, it was really special. The team did the most amazing job.

T: The bond that you formed with your co-driver. That intensity of being together all the time...

P: Yeah, Ryan is a phenomenal individual. He’s a great driver. He’s a very tough, but fair, coach. I really wouldn’t have wanted to sit next to anybody else for those few days. I really love that guy and I love the car. That car took care of us.

So, the name, while we were in Scotland and we were bombing up these B-roads, I nicknamed the car ‘Bandit’. We called it the ‘B-road

Bandit’. And Bandit, through Africa was a bandit. It kept stealing positions it shouldn’t have had. It was keeping us going through the most horrific wrecks and stupidity on my part. And that car is every inch of its name.

I think I’ve got to say something about the team, because I’ve only been racing a year and a half. And I’ve raced a very underpowered saloon car in China.

I’ve been lucky enough to race in the GT4 World Final in Bahrain. I’ve been lucky enough to race at Macau. I’ve been lucky enough to race the TT at the Goodwood Revival. The first time I’ve ever felt like I was a factory driver for a team was in Africa with Tuthill.

For somebody who loves motorsport, for somebody who loves cars, and for someone who’s gotten into racing, because they love it, it was an unexpected surprise, that was my favourite part of the rally.

I know it sounds silly, but to have a team doctor and to have a cook who’s there in the middle of nowhere. And you pull the car in and you’ve got your head mechanic and you’ve got the main engineer for the Tuthill team 58

and you’ve got Richard, and Richard’s typically the first person who comes up to you and he speaks to the driver.

The main engineer goes up and speaks to your co-driver. Then your mechanic starts getting instructions. Your lead mechanic on the car starts getting instructions on what to do.

You pull yourself out. And I would typically go and speak to the doctor and say, “Okay. I’m okay, Ryan’s okay.

Can we have more water and tabs (hydration tablets) in the car? Can you fill up the bottles? Can you do this, that and the other?” And then I watched while they fixed what I’d just damaged.

Or go and have 15 minutes of food, which was surprisingly fantastic for side-of-the-road food. Or talk to the drivers about the stage. Or speak to Ryan and debrief a little bit on what I’d done right and what I’d done wrong, and tell him what was working for me and what wasn’t. And then to watch when the guys were working on the car on the rest day. And to finish the rally and to celebrate with the guys and to see what it meant for them.

It’s one of those events where it’s not about the driver, it’s about the whole

team. And it was really special to be part of that.

T: It’s a real family feel, then. Every element important, without one of those it falls apart a bit?

P: I don’t really know how to describe it to this day, but it was my favourite part of the rally. And, bear in mind, I got to build a Safari rally car painted ridiculously, brought it to Africa and got to see Africa, which is spectacular!

We followed camels down the road, we chased giraffes. We would arrive and have a herd of cattle in front of us, while we’re doing 120 kilometres an hour, and try to figure out where they’re going. And we saw elephants at night, where we were standing. It was spectacular! It was all the things you’d hope it would be. But I hope I do it enough justice to say that I don’t know how to describe it, but the best part of it was being part of that team.

T: Did the mental tiredness or the physical tiredness surprise you at all?

P: I think I’m pretty resilient. At the end of the day, I was pretty ready to call

it. I’m one of those people who quite exerts myself and then retires when it’s the right time to retire.

I don’t feel the need to have the beer with everyone if I don’t want to have the beer, which sometimes comes across a little bit wrong. Physically it was fine, except for that one stage where we crashed out and I had to pull the throttle back. I really hurt my foot and my back in that stage. Just having to sit strangely in the seat.

Ryan said I did a great impression of a circuit-racing driver when I got out and I had the doctor looking at me and people crowded around. I’m like, ‘Why, thank you. That’s what I do, normally’.

No, I think at the end of the rally I was done. I’m glad it’s not a rally that happens yearly, because I wouldn’t do it if it happened yearly.

But I’m excited to go back and contest it again. I have a much better appreciation of how it runs.

Unfortunately, we’re probably going to have to re-shell my car. But I think when I go back next time, it’ll be a different rally for me. Not that it’ll be 59

any less fun, but I’ll have a different ability to go and do it.

T: As you say, phenomenal to have been competing up the leaderboard with the other guys that have done it numerous times before you.

P: It’s amazing to finish in the top five. I think when I got there I was like, ‘Yeah, I could win this’. And then you realise you’re competing against Stig Blomqvist and the Kenyan national rally champion, guys who did WRC and WRC2 and have a lot of experience, and you think, ‘Okay.

Maybe I can’t win this.’ And you’re like, ‘Top three would be nice.’

And then you crash out on the first stage and you’re like, ‘Finishing would be nice!’ So to finish like that, it was fantastic. I’ve got to say, if you have the ability, go do it. I’ve got to do quite a few things. That is the best racing experience I’ve ever had.

T: Thanks very much Philip.

P: Thank you.

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THE OVER ACHIEVER T O N Y

R O L T

WORDS: ANDREW FRANKEL PHOTOS: ALAMY

Many years ago, when it was my very happy lot to be the editor of Motor Sport magazine, I retold the story of how Tony Rolt and Duncan Hamilton won Le Mans for Jaguar in 1953. You may know the tale yourself, about how they’d retired to a bar after being told their car had been thrown out by the scrutineers and about just how drunk they were when finally found and told their car had been re-admitted. They were duly shovelled into some transport, poured into their Jaguar C-Type very much the worse for wear and, somewhat sozzled, nevertheless managed to win the world’s greatest motor race. No wonder I called the resulting story ‘Drunken Charge.’

There was only one tiny problem: it was almost entirely untrue. I found this out on the day it was published when I received a call from Tony Rolt’s son Stuart, saying he couldn’t believe I was peddling such nonsense and how upset it had made his father. “But,” I blurted out, “it’s all in Duncan Hamilton’s

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autobiography!” Duncan, it turned out, was not just a ferociously fast and brave driver, he was also not exactly averse to spicing up a story if it’d sell a few more books. I should have known better.

Yet it was not to be the only time I’d feel thoroughly ashamed in connection to Tony Rolt. Years later, I won my class in an entirely unimportant historic-car race at Silverstone and only just made prizegiving because I’d been driving something else. It was summer, I was swelteringly hot, so I walked up to the stage with my overalls tied around my waist, wearing only an oily fireproof vest on top. Whereupon an impossibly dapper elderly gentleman appeared to present me with my prize. You can guess who: somewhere I have a picture of an immaculately presented Tony Rolt standing grimly next a sweaty halfdressed yob, but I’m too ashamed even to look for it.

For Tony Rolt, or Anthony Peter Roylance Rolt, was a true motor-racing hero, and I use the word in its most

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literal sense. There are plenty of people who might say Lewis Hamilton was their hero, but that does not make him a hero. A bloody good driver? Yes. A hero? Not to me.

Rolt was born into a military family during the last month of the First World War and started racing aged just 16.

But he announced his presence when, barely out of his teens, he won the 1939 British Empire Trophy at Donington.

Previous winners included John Cobb and Dick Seaman, those to come included Stirling Moss and Archie Scott Brown.

Less than a year later and still aged just 21, Lieutenant Rolt found himself fighting back the Panzers at Dunkirk, helping to hold off the enemy for long enough to allow the British to escape.

For that, he won the Military Cross and as any student of such decorations 65

will tell you, they don’t just give those away. But it also earned him indefinite detention in one of Herr Hitler’s POW holiday camps. Or that was certainly the Germans’ plan: Rolt, however, had other ideas, and escaped so many times from so many different places he was awarded a bar to his MC. By the time he somewhat inevitably wound up in the allegedly escape-proof Oflag IV-C, it would be his seventh official residence within the Reich. You’ll know it better as Colditz Castle.

There, with Bill Goldfinch and Jack Best, he dreamed up an escape plan so daring that if you submitted it as a screenplay it would be rejected as simply too implausible. Their idea was that in the middle of a castle teeming with highly suspicious Germans, they would create a workshop and using only materials that could be sourced from

within the castle – and which would not be missed – build a glider and launch it off the roof.

And build it they did. Using floorboards, bed slats and sleeping bags as their primary construction materials, not only was the glider created, but a means of launching it, too: namely using the momentum of a bath full of concrete dropped off the side of the castle to catapult the glider to above its 32mph stalling speed.

But it would be 55 years before Rolt found out whether it would fly or not.

With the Allies advancing, all escape attempts were put on hold before the castle’s inmates were liberated.

Just one picture of ‘the Colditz cock’ is known to exist and the glider itself disappeared without trace. It was only when a team built a full-sized radio-controlled replica in 2000 and launched it off the roof of the castle that the answer was found. It flew, if not beautifully, then certainly well enough to transport two prisoners to the outside world.

The newly liberated Rolt was keen to return to racing, and from 1948-55 he raced in all manner of formulae, including Formula 1, Formula 3 and Formula Libre, taking part in three British Grands Prix. But it was in sports cars in general and at Le Mans in particular that he’s best remembered.

He took part in seven on the trot, in all

but the first partnering with Hamilton, finishing fourth and sixth in NashHealeys in 1950-51 before joining Jaguar where he’d stay for the next four seasons.

In 1952, his C-Type succumbed to the same overheating problems as all the other works cars – a result of body modification aimed at improving aerodynamics to rival the very slippery Mercedes-Benz 300SL – but in 1953 and, entirely sober so far as can be ascertained, he drove to that famous victory, the first time the race would be won by a car with disc brakes.

He and Hamilton damn near won again the following year, driving a very early 3.4-litre D-Type in filthy weather and thoroughly outgunned by a 5.0-litre works Ferrari 375 Plus driven by Maurice Trintignant and the very great Froilán González. They had plenty of bad luck – a misfiring engine caused by a blocked fuel filter and Rolt smearing the car down a barrier when a backmarker didn’t see him, but at the flag they were still in second place and just seconds behind the big Ferrari.

They were in second place again in the early hours of Sunday morning in 1955, too, when their gearbox gave up and forced retirement from a race marred by the worst single disaster in the history of motorsport.

Understandably, Rolt had had enough, and aged just 36M, he

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retired from the sport.

But he wasn’t done with achieving.

For years he’d been working on practical applications of four-wheel drive, his company gaining sponsorship from tractor magnate Harry Ferguson to work on a revolutionary four-wheeldrive F1 car. Called the Ferguson P99, it was hobbled both by the decision to reduce engine capacity to 1.5 litres, which would penalise the additional weight of the four-wheel-drive system, and also the grid’s wholesale conversion to mid-mounted engines.

Even so, in 1961 Stirling Moss used it to win a wet Gold Cup at Oulton Park, the first and to date only victory for any F1 car fitted with all-wheel drive. Moss

has always ranked it among his very favourite racing cars. The Ferguson four-wheel-drive system pioneered by Rolt also found its way onto the Jensen FF, the very first pure road car to direct its drive to all four corners.

What a story and what a life, and the only reason he’s not far more famous is that in addition to his talent, courage, intelligence and visionary thinking, Tony Rolt was also a quiet and modest man, albeit with a highly developed sense of humour. He died in 2008, just before his 90th birthday: a man who in just 15 years between 1939-54 achieved more than almost anyone else might hope to manage in an entire lifetime.

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MISSION ABORTED WORDS: CHARLOTTE VOWDEN P H OTO S : J A N E T I V E S A N D J A M E S W I LT S H I R E

Before every journey, my late grandfather would lovingly caution: “drive safely, sweetheart.� He was a worrier, so I can write with confidence that if he had been alive when I made the decision to ship his little red MGA roadster to southeast Asia and embark on a twomonth, self-organised mission to reach Everest Base Camp North via Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos, mainland China and 17,000-foot Tibetan mountain passes, he would have confiscated the keys.

In his absence, it was the coronavirus outbreak that stopped me making tracks. Two days before the car was scheduled to be belted and braced in a container for a 30-day voyage to Bangkok, everything fell apart.

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It was meant to be the biggest, riskiest, road trip I’d ever taken in Frisky – my grandfather’s prized retirement present to himself – and my dad, Steve, was to co-drive.

Entirely out of our comfort zone, it was the ‘something remarkable’ that I’d been seeking to mark her 60th year. It’s almost three decades after she won the Monte Carlo Classic Rally, before my grandfather, my mum’s father, and Dodo as I knew him, became her custodian. I thought she needed a good challenge to prove that she’s still got it.

We were meant to set off in April, alongside four MGs that had been brought together by one of the other drivers, a man called David Godwin. The 69-year-old Australian has circumnavigated the globe in his MGA and was looking for a convoy to join him on his latest high-altitude expedition. I answered the advert he placed in the MG Car Club’s Safety Fast magazine as soon as I finished reading it.

The plan was to do it on our own, without support vehicles, mechanics, medics or event organisers. We signed up for the high risks associated with the scenario, but a sense of confident nervousness

came with the knowledge that David has extensive experience, and with exhaustive preparation, our vehicles would be more capable, and hopefully more reliable, than when they were built.

Hours, days, mornings, nights and weekends were spent working on Frisky. After a disheartening diagnosis, we lost the whole of summer 2019 together when she was off-roaded for a critical engine rebuild. The team at Blue Diamond Riley Services rallied to revive her insides and as soon as the spanners were downed, we picked her up from their Bicester Heritage headquarters and completed her running-in period. After an oil change, and a tiny tweak or two, I clocked 1500 miles, all without fault - but there was still more to do. That’s when my dad, a mechanic by trade, took over.

It was tough to watch the heat being drawn out of his body as he toiled over Frisky throughout the winter. His hair bedraggled and his eyes tired, he was missing meals and losing sleep as he brainstormed things he could do to improve her performance and protect her vitals from damage on tough, potholeridden roads.

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He commissioned a sump guard and spare-wheel bracket to be made and fitted, then replaced her rally coil springs with standard ones to give her more lift. He installed a two-way radio, rear foglight, five charging ports, a second set of side mirrors and a glass petrol filter to help cope with the lower-quality fuel we would be forced to use. We put in seatbelts – a requirement to drive in China – but agreed it would probably be best to be thrown from a car with no crumple zone in the event of a severe accident.

I helped where I could, assisting and getting lessons in basic mechanics, but it was my dad’s relentless commitment to us and the journey that got Frisky in readyto-go mode. To preserve as much of the car that my grandfather loved, I removed and replaced what I could, including carpet, bumpers and her beautiful spoked hubs. The expense of the project crept comfortably into the tens of thousands, depleting savings set aside for the deposit on a house.

My focus was largely on logistics, which may sound like a lesser task, but the complexities of such a trip presented an exhaustive timetable

Photos: Dodo and Frisky’s first summer, you can still see the Monte Carlo decal on the door. Dad and I in the garage, the night before the radiator drama. On the finishers ramp in Monte-Carlo.

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AS A TEAM, WE DECIDED TO ABORT MISSION. NOT A HYSTERICAL REACTION, BUT A D E VA S TAT I N G D E F E AT of conversations caught between timezones and hindered by language barriers to make sure we had the correct documentation to cross each border, into each country. A Carnet de Passage had to be obtained, along with visas, permits to drive and international driving licences Insurance and shipping had to be arranged, with days factored in for delays due to bad weather or customs bureaucracy in Thailand.

Slowly, and with a lot of patience, it all came together... until it didn’t. The night before we were due to deliver Frisky to Felixstowe docks, I asked my boyfriend, through tears: “What have I done?”.

Frisky had presented a crack in her new radiator as well as a dead headlight, and the coronavirus was hitting the headlines. Dad was exhausted, at his wits’ end, but he encouraged me to focus and concentrate on dealing with what we could control. What followed was a frantic and anxious scramble for new parts and to make the necessary repairs and to my dad’s credit, Frisky was fixed and delivered to the docks on time – he was my hero in a hi-vis jacket that day. Then, the virus was declared a global health emergency.

The Chinese government imposed restrictions on movement

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– including the closure of borders and highways – and more than half of the population was put into full or partial lockdown as drones were deployed to disinfect streets and emergency hospitals were constructed in an attempt to care for the escalating number of casualties.

The news went from bad to worse: the UK government told British citizens to get out, and not to go in.

As a team, we decided to abort mission. Not a hysterical reaction, but a devastating defeat. We had been under no illusion that our trip wouldn’t be without incident, but dealing with something that happens on the road is different to willingly

The day the engine was removed at Blue Diamond Riley Services

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driving into danger, without valid insurance, and possibly without help.

The reality of getting denied entry at land borders because we had travelled through infected areas was too real. We could become trapped, with our precious cars, with no way out, and expired visas. Our itinerary included over three weeks in mainland China, and even if we’d made it there, we would have been vulnerable. I’d never have forgiven myself if dad had fallen ill, and I could never leave Frisky behind.

To be a true adventurer is hard work. It requires bravery and suffering and a desire to experience the world in a different way to most.

Even though we were robbed of the

best bit – the actual adventure – I want my dad to know that he’s got everything, and more, than it takes.

The mountaineer George Mallory perished on Everest in 1924, and the passing remark he made “because it›’s there” to explain why he wanted to reach the summit has become much repeated. Yes, I wanted to go to Everest Base Camp because it’s there, and it always will be.

The other drivers plan to try again later this year, or next, but dad and I need to regroup and rethink. The experience of planning an adventure that was over before it even began has left me feeling bruised, and a little nervous about letting myself

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imagine something new, but dad has promised that the adventure isn’t over yet – we just don’t know what it’s going to be. What I do know is that it doesn’t have to be big, or bold: it has to be right.

With Dodo, Frisky lived a sheltered life for 30 years, brought out only in the sunshine. With me, she’s developed a fine set of adventure freckles in the three years we’ve had together. They’re prominent on the wave of her wheelarches, little bare metal chinks in her chariot-red armour where stones have chipped away her skin.

With him, was she safe from disaster, or with me, is she free for adventure?

Above Far Left: Taken just before we set off to the pub on one of our last drives together.

Above Left: When he brought her home for the first time, showing her off in front of my nan, left, and his best mates’s wife.

Notice the trusty BMW 5 Series in both photos, he was very loyal!

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Above: A final test drive in February this year, dad in the driving seat, all systems ready to go.

“SOME PEOPLE THINK WE ARE MAD” WORDS: GILLIAN CARR

PHOTOS: ABBY BOWERS

It’s the first Saturday in November. Most people would be stirring under their duvets, but the wind is ripping the bottom off my earlobes and the damp patch on the small of my back is now starting to soak into my underwear.

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T H E R E T U R N I N G D R I V E R S A L L Q U I P, ‘ C R I K E Y, T H E R E ’ S A B I G G U L L E Y H A L F WAY U P, Y O U ’ L L N E E D T O G I V E I T L O A D S ’ After a 6am alarm call, I’m stood in the entrance to an old slate mine deep in the Lake District, hugging a polystyrene cup of coffee, safe in the knowledge that this will be my last contact with anything warm for the rest of the day. I’m gathered with some great mates, probably the people I hold some of the best regard for in the world, because we share the lunatic notions that it’s perfectly acceptable to spend seven hours travelling up the M6 in Friday afternoon traffic, it’s absolutely fine that all of us got to bed far too late last night and most of all, it’s totally normal to be stood here in sub-zero temperatures in the peeing rain.

Then we hear the whistle. The section is open for business, our team of four leaps into action, letting the rear tyre pressures down, securing packed lunchboxes of pork pie and sausage rolls from going AWOL in the car and practising our ‘bouncing’ technique. We nervously wait our turn in the queue, staring up at the 689-metre peak of Fleetwith Pike, watching the cars ahead disappear out of view into the swirling cloud of mist to an

unknown fate at the hands of the slippery slate road that leads to the mine on Honister Pass.

We nudge up the queue nearer to the line as the cars ahead of us make their ascent. The returning drivers all quip, ‘Crikey, there’s a big gulley halfway up, you’ll need to give it loads’. We all try to hide our nervousness with gung-ho smiles and brace ourselves. The marshal lines us up, drops the flag and we’re off. The magnificent 4.2-litre engine of the mighty 1924 Vauxhall 30-98 sports car makes light work of the climb, we find the gully, which clouts us three bouncers pretty hard, but there’s no time to lick our wounds: we’re still powering on through the tight bends past the markers denoting our points that’ll be scored, numbered 1-25, poised to bounce, until finally, we cheer as we ‘clear’ to score 25. When you couldn’t feel any more elated, you then have a chance to look at the vista and quite frankly, it takes your breath away.

The rugged peaks of the Lake District lie beneath us, the fiery hues of autumn are vibrant and I’ve long since forgotten that it’s 80

raining. The first hill in the bag is one of the toughest on the event, named ‘Drumhouse’. At first glance, you’d want to be driving up it in one of the best equipped Camel Trophy Land Rovers, but we’ve just nailed it in a 96-year-old car, as will another hundred-odd drivers in cars built before the end of the 1930s – all in standard turnout with only minor modifications allowed. Feeling privileged that we’ve had the opportunity to drive up this private track, we put the air back in the tyres, plan the route on the map and drive off past the National Trust’s Crummock Water onto the next of another 12 hills.

During the day, we tackle sections laid out across 60 square miles of the northern Lake District, many in what would be silent forests – that is, until the crackle and roar of a vintage car revving its guts out tackling a hill shatters the tranquility. At 295 metres above sea level in the Beck Wythop forest overlooking Bassenthwaite Lake, a volunteer marshal wielding a clipboard notices me looking north at the view. ‘That’s Scotland, dear’, he says to me, and indeed, from here I can see the Solway Firth

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“IT CERTAINLY ALLOWS YOU TO EXPERIENCE THIS STUNNING CORNER OF SOUTHWEST ENGLAND FROM A UNIQUE PERSPECTIVE ABOARD AN OPEN TOP PRE-WAR CAR”

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looking onto the forests of Galloway – a far cry from the previous morning’s view at my office desk.

After a brilliant day’s sport, we retreat back to the Wheatsheaf Pub at Lower Lorton, which is packed to the rafters with VSCC members thawing out from the day’s tribulations. The post-match beer always tastes the best and we exchange tails of heroics with fellow competitors ahead of the results being shared. Not up to our usual form this time, we head out for a celebratory evening meal in the delightful town of Keswick and

drink too much again! To clear our heads the following day, we park up at Grasmere in the southern Lake District and enjoy a headclearing walk in the hills and a good lunch. This is the life!

Only two weeks later, many of the same faces head south to the Cotswolds for a one-day trial that uses the famous Prescott hillclimb venue as its base and visits sections far off the beaten track around Winchcombe and Broadway. There’s then an agonising Christmas break and by the time mid-February arrives, 84

we’re champing at the bit to head to Exmoor; the trial is run out of the Anchor Inn at Exebridge, not far from Dulverton, and has 12 sections in woods on the edge of the moor. Travelling between them, it’s possible to see the wild ponies that inhabit the rugged landscape.

A glorious event, it certainly allows you to experience this stunning corner of southwest England from a unique perspective aboard an open top pre-war car.

Another delight is the earlyMarch Derbyshire Trial, which uses the majestic Peak District

around the revered Chatsworth House, seat of the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire. This is yet another area of exquisite beauty and heritage. Spring is most definitely on its way by midMarch, which sees the two-day Herefordshire Trial.

The event is run out of How Caple Court, which has a Domesday Book reference circa 1089; the current manor house and gardens date back to the early 16th century. Many of the sections are located at the foot of the Malvern Hills and we pass through the

town of Ledbury with its 16thcentury market house. The final event before the summer break is the Scottish Trial, to the west of Edinburgh around the town of Biggar, another area you might have little cause to visit, but which is rich in beauty, set between the Rivers Clyde and Tweed in the Southern Uplands. Warm temperatures and dry land does not make for good off-road trialling, so there’s a long break until the second weekend of October for the first event of the autumn season, and the most historic: the VSCC 85

Welsh Trial has been based in the border town of Presteigne in Powys since 1939.

In the 1930s, when these cars were only 10 to 15 years old, trials was a most popular sport. At a time when circuit races were few and far between, trials events were easy to organise and teams from Riley, Triumph, Singer and MG, with their famous ‘Cream Cracker’ cream-and-brown P-Types sought success at events across the country organised by the Motor Cycling Club (MCC) to prove the performance of their vehicle.

Trials such as the Lands’ End, Exeter and Edinburgh events are still held to this day, attracting far more modern machinery but still with pre-war participation. Vintage Sports Car Club trials are exclusively for prewar cars running in two classes: one for short-wheelbase cars, such as Austin 7s and another for longwheelbase cars, for which Model A Fords, Rileys, Vauxhall 30-98s and Bentleys are popular.

We live on a stunning island, but it’s too easy to head for the tunnel and run away to Europe,

forgetting the beauty on our doorstep. Although it’s not so much fun to explore these locations with the masses of weekend tourists, the view and experience from the seat of a vintage car is unbeatable and to share it with a huge gang of mates is an unrivalled joy!

It attracts competitors from a span of generations, encourages mechanical skill (you’ll be waiting a long time for the AA in the middle of the Lake District with no phone reception) and allows you to explore this glorious island that is our home throughout the dullest period 86

of the year. If you’re well equipped with some decent thermals and a hip flask, I truly believe there’s no finer sport to be had at the wheel of a vintage car.

The Vintage Sports Car Club organises seven off-road trials events during the season, which runs from October to April. The Light Car and Edwardian Section run a trial in Wales in March. All events are organised by volunteers and you can only participate in an eligible pre-war car. For details, see www.vscc.co.uk

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Simply the best C A N 2 ,0 0 0 M I L E S I N T H E M C L A R E N 7 2 0 S A F F I R M I T S P L AC E A S T H E B E S T C A R I N T H E WO R L D R I G H T N OW ?

WORDS AND PHOTOS: TIM HUTTON

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When the McLaren 720S was launched at the Geneva Motor Show in 2017, it caused a lot of controversy. Many people were unsure of the new ‘eye-socket’ headlights, but there was no denying the car’s performance credentials. Since then, I’ve been lucky enough to drive one for a few laps on track and spend a long weekend with one.

Despite the subsequent launch of the new McLaren GT, I’ve always felt that the 720S would make a great GT in its own right, so I suggested to the McLaren press office that I drive one down to St Moritz to cover the ICE Concours. As we now know, this was one of the first motoring events to be cancelled due to the coronavirus situation – something I didn’t discover until I was pulling into Colmar, halfway to St Moritz.

Rewind seven hours and I was rolling off the French side of the Eurotunnel in a Silica White 720S Spider Luxury. Less than 30 minutes into the drive along the autoroute, I met my first challenge. It started snowing, which was rather unplanned, and with unsalted roads, progress slowed to a crawl. In front were two snowploughs clearing the road, but I managed to sneak a look ahead and realised they weren’t actually clearing anything. So,

with a set of Pirelli Sottozero winter tyres fitted, I decided to make a move past. I was rewarded with glorious empty roads; it wasn’t quite clear what they were ploughing!

In Spider form, you get slightly less storage space in the 720S, losing most of the area behind the driver. In saying that, I managed to pack clothing and camera gear for two people for six days, which is still pretty impressive.

The light and airy cabin with thin pillars makes driving on dual-carriageways nice and easy, it’s comfortable and there’s plenty of visibility. The roof also has a tint that can be turned on and off depending how much light you want inside. The McLaren GT’s cabin is more luxurious, yes, but even this well fed 40-year-old had no issues spending 12 hours in the 720S Spider.

As always, the first 200 miles or so through northern France are fairly mind numbing, but as soon as I turn towards Colmar from Nancy, the scenery finally starts to get more interesting. The weather hasn’t improved, though, turning from snow to blustery showers. The McLaren is surefooted negotiating debris on the roads, but I’m itching to unlock some of that mind-blowing performance.

What a difference a good night’s sleep

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makes. The next day, the sky is calm and the sun is shining, so I put the roof down.

Thankfully it’s a decision you can make while driving at up to 30mph. Instantly, you notice the engine noise, and while there’s still a way to go towards getting these modern turbocharged supercars to sound like Group B rally machinery, the sound is improving. This particular car is fitted with a sports exhaust, but more on that later…

The plan is to continue on to St Moritz and see what’s going on there, before heading across to Andermatt for some rest and recuperation at The Chedi hotel. Driving out of Colmar towards the Swiss border in Basel, it’s nice to finally be able to drive in spirited fashion, although with the winter tyres fitted, trying to put down over 700bhp on the dry roads is a challenge. I have to enjoy it while I can, as once I cross into Switzerland, best behaviour is required.

From Basel, progress is slow until finally turning off the main roads and onto the Julier Pass. It’s not iconic like the Stelvio, but it’s a far better road: wide, smooth and sweeping rather than non-stop hairpins. The snow is glistening in the sunshine, the sunglasses are on, the roof is down and sports mode is engaged. Accessing the full rev range rewards you with that

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intoxicating power delivery from the twin-turbo V8 and, more importantly, the odd bang from the exhaust as you move through the gears. It doesn’t feel manufactured; it’s not every gearchange and it makes you drive harder to get the car to do it again!

Even three years on from launch, the 720S remains one of the fastest cars you can buy. There’s simply nothing that drives as well in the supercar and hypercar arena. The power is so accessible and the handling is sublime.

The car delivers all the information you need to help you drive fast with confidence, which is remarkable.

You could be fooled into thinking that’s because all the fun has been extracted through its perfect design.

But the 720S can be playful; the variable drift mode allows you to explore the limits of the car in a more controlled manner. The slip angle can be adjusted with a swipe of the finger.

And while it’s best saved for the race

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track, it would be rude not to explore the limits briefly.

The 720S Spider really is an incredible car, and as I drop down into St Moritz, I can’t help but think how great it would be to have a set of tyres and a day at Silverstone to really learn the car’s talent (and mine!) It’s very sad driving through St Moritz seeing the signs for The ICE Concours; down by the lake the empty tents tell the full story – this is an event that many people have put time, money and effort into. Cancelling was a real shame, but the right decision in the moment and looking back it’s easy to understand the dilemma organisers faced with events like these.

The next morning’s drive from St Moritz to Andermatt was pretty steady; all the exciting passes were still closed due to snow cover, so it was well behaved driving on the main roads.

With the roof up, it’s so easy to forget this is a Spider. In coupe form, the 720S

is a car you could use every day and in Spider form you can still enjoy it all year round with the roof down.

In below-freezing temperatures, driving is still fun and warm enough; you can also easily chat to your passenger. The small rear window can be lowered and with the roof up offers direct access to the rumble of the V8 twin turbo. I think it’s mandatory that you have this down at all times!

From Andermatt, it’s a four-anda-half-hour drive via Basel to Beaune, a quaint French town just south of Dijon. Popular on tours through France as a break in the drive heading south towards Route Napoleon, it’s also home to Hostellerie Cèdre, a lovely hotel that has recently been renovated and has an amazing restaurant.

The final day sees an autoroute dash via Reims back to the Eurotunnel. I keep forgetting this 720S is a Spider – that may sound stupid, but with the roof up there’s nothing to suggest you’re in a convertible. Given the lucky choice, I

wouldn’t normally pick a spider over a coupe, but the way the 720S has been built means there’s no real downside to having the Spider; it’s just as quick.

But on any dry day, and maybe even in light rain or snow, you can have that roof down and enjoy opentop motoring. Compared to its Italian rivals, I think the 720S Spider is a design success and if I was ticking the options for myself, I’d choose a nice dark metallic hue for the exterior with a more sports-focused interior. There simply is no such thing as too much alcantara as far as I’m concerned!

As I drive onto the Eurotunnel in Calais, I’m pleased to accept the fact that my last 2,000 miles in Europe for the foreseeable future have been in this car. A car as fast as this just shouldn’t be as accessible, but it is.

That, combined with its grand touring credentials, makes it one of the most impressive cars on sale right now.

Quite an accolade for a model that has already been around for three years.

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The UK’s leading McLaren specialist M: 07711 331 365 T: 01245 231 185 E: info@alastairbols.com W: www.alastairbols.com

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WHERE WE STAYED

THE CHEDI SWITZERLAND Nestled in the growing resort of Andermatt, The Chedi’s execution of Asian luxury meets Alpine chic makes it one of the finest hotels in the world.

It’s no surprise that The Chedi is popular with car tour companies.

My first experience of the hotel was in 2017, as part of a tour through the Swiss Alps. On that occasion I just stayed for one night, but it was long enough to briefly enjoy its world-class spa facilities, outdoor heated pool and exceptional food.

Since that first trip, the ski lifts have been opened and guests can easily pass from the side of the hotel’s ski lounge straight up to a lift, taking you to amazing views and well groomed slopes. There’s also fine Japanese dining thanks to The Chedi’s continued investment.

I extended my most recent stay by a night, as planned events were getting shut down due to the early stages of the coronavirus outbreak.

In the winter months, a small pop-up chalet restaurant offers guests fondue and raclette. And if you’re celebrating a very special occasion, there’s the one-Michelinstar Japanese restaurant, another addition since my first visit. My favourite is the Cheese Room, a towering glass room situated in the open-plan main restaurant, where you can be talked round all the locally sourced cheeses on offer. Do not miss out on this!

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WORDS AND PHOTOS TIM HUTTON

The main reason I added an extra night though is the spa. It really is pure relaxation and was well needed as the world started to shut down around me. The multiaward-winning 2,400-square-metre spa has 10 Deluxe Spa Suites, hydrothermal pools, a heated outdoor pool and a 35-metre indoor pool with a glass roof and stunning panoramic views across the Alps.

Unsurprisingly, the rooms are just as stunning. The feel is palatial and open plan, with sliding doors to add privacy for the bathroom area.

The rooms feature open fires and generous balconies. You wouldn’t be blamed for not leaving your room, in fact, apart from one huge reason...

THE CHEDI ROADBOOK

Andermatt is surrounded by some of the world’s greatest driving roads. Sadly, while I was visiting at the beginning of March, the roads were still well covered in snow and closed. But on previous trips, I have been able to drive the Grimsel, Furka, Gottard and Oberalp passes in this area. There are even more, though: Susten, Nufenen, Lukmanier and Klausen are all just a drive away.

The Furka Pass is the iconic road James Bond drives his Aston Martin DB5 along in Goldfinger. As you reach the corner with the Belvédère Hotel, it looks like something out of a Wes Anderson film and as you drop down into the valley and towards

Andermatt, you pass through Realp and continue to follow in the wheel tracks of Bond’s Aston.

If you’re reading this, then you obviously appreciate driving, and I can’t recommend enough that you tick these roads off your bucket list while you still can. Just don’t get caught speeding!

The Chedi remains one of my top five hotels in the world and whether you visit in summer or winter, you won’t be disappointed – come for the roads in the summer and stay for the snow in the winter. Not much in this world feels quite as special as swimming in the heated outdoor pool as snow falls. I will most certainly be back again.

Download The Chedi Andermatt’s bespoke road book guiding you around the local mountain passes.

These roads are some of the greatest in the world including the Furka as immortalised by James Bond in Goldfinger with his Aston Martin.

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A P M C C R O SS - C O U N T R Y I N V E S T I G AT I O N

AUDI R8: TOO GOOD OR TOO BORING? WORDS: JAMES BANNISTER PHOTOS: TIM HUTTON

“The Curse of Competence” – a phrase first uttered to me by an old boss as he piled more work on my desk some five years ago, but has stuck with me ever since.

Applicable to many things in life, although not usually dripping with irony, as it was when said by a man whose meeting with any shred of competence would no doubt cause the world to implode, it’s something that often plagues products as well as people.

It’s well known that when a product is good, even too good, it can result in a lack of charisma. Porsche has by all accounts managed to navigate this, with the vast majority recognising the ability of those plucky Germans to inject character into every iteration of the 911 with immaculate, clinical precision. For Audi, however, the road has been rockier, with the sheer ability of its high-performance products often outweighing any sense of spinetingling effervescence.

Nowadays, any mid-20s male with a skin fade can launch control their PCP-financed RS3 into another dimension with ease, and my God they do love to, while RS6s

continue to adorn circuit car parks as gentleman drivers load up racing paraphernalia and blast crosscontinent at face-melting pace. For those seeking true usability coupled with outrageous performance, an Audi with a badge beginning with ‘R’ will see you right. This is old news, of course, but at no point have I ever heard anyone buy such a car for the way it makes them feel. There is of course a joy to be extracted from such excellence, but without the trouser twitches unashamedly produced by other supercars, is there any point in buying one?

As a way of testing this, a spontaneous road trip seemed the best method, one that would take in long motorway stretches, town driving and Scottish road royalty in the form of the Old Military Road up to Braemar. Our test subject, the somewhat new R8 V10 Performance. That’s right, not the all-singing, all-sliding RWD version, but the tried-and-tested biblicalV10-meets-quattro-über-traction combination that has been going for almost 15 years. So strong was my faith in this car soaking up

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SO STRONG WAS MY FAITH IN THIS CAR SOAKING UP ANYTHING WE THREW AT IT THAT THE ROAD-TRIP ROUTE BECAME LONGER AND LONGER

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anything we threw at it that the road-trip route became longer and longer, until we were eventually driving south to Cornwall, only to turn around the next day and head north to Braemar. South to North, over smooth and rough, this would be a fitting test of the R8.

Let’s begin with the interior. For the driver, it’s absolutely mega; an ideal combination of ergonomics with just the right amount of spaceship feel. The giant screen ahead of you is never distracting despite the amount of information displayed, and all controls require zero thought to operate. It’d be

remiss of me to not mention my initial reaction to jumping in the passenger seat and being greeted by, well, nothing ahead of me. I’m all for clean and efficient design, and while I see the argument that if nothing needs to be there, nothing should be there, I’m on the fence as to whether it’s okay to have such an empty half of the dashboard. The seats are supportive but forgiving, and during our journey not once did driver or passenger have any complaints. So far we’re bang on trend with the aforementioned Audi sentiment.

Moving on to the engine, 104

it’s hard to quantify just how intoxicating that naturally aspirated V10 is to push. The tone is just so well judged, neither too deep nor too metallic, and it just gets more rewarding the higher you go. I’d wager R8s are responsible for more lost licenses than any other supercar, and I say this for a number of reasons.

Firstly, if you’re caning it and getting swept away by the engine, you’ll soon realise that the sweet spot in feel and sound is way beyond smack-on-the-knuckles territory.

Secondly, this engine possesses such effortless linear power delivery

that even when you’re not trying, you’ll break the speed limit if you’re not careful. An empty patch of motorway with no other cars as reference points has me unwittingly sitting far beyond my intentional point of a gentlemanly percentage above the limit, at a number any copper would get great pleasure in grabbing me for, and with good reason.

And for those of you reading this thinking that surely it’s the R8’s Italian cousin, the Lamborghini Huracan, that’s the vehicle most associated with lost licenses, I disagree. They’re more likely to get

pulled over by the fuzz for twattish antics below the speed limit, or a horrendous ‘4D carbon-weave print’ private plate with illegal spacing.

There’s something of an elephant in the room with modern R8s, the trumpeting alarm of which I only became aware once things got Scottish and twisty. Audi calls it ‘electromechanical steering with speed-dependent power assistance’.

The first question asked by every motoring journalist I mentioned my R8 trip to was “Has it got the steering thingy?”, usually coupled with an odd look. The premise behind this system makes perfect 105

sense: weighting up under duress and offering something to lean in to from the cabin as the wheels disperse biblical grip and the V10 wails.

In reality, it feels more akin to the wedding DJ turning on some atmospheric music midway through an emotional section in the best man’s speech in an attempt to add to the moment. It’s not offensive by any means, it’s just a slight interference that isn’t really welcome, although well intentioned.

As you become more and more confident in chucking the R8 into each turn, and as you resign your

mind to forgetting everything you know about physics, having this extra weight thrown in is just a bit odd really.

But coming back to the purpose of this road trip, there was one key moment that really confirmed the R8’s trump card. After trundling down to Cornwall and navigating the deep joy of reversing into a car lift to park the car at our hotel, PMC’s editor and I hatched a plan to do the trip to Braemar in one go, with as few stops as possible. No dawdling Costa-filled petrol stops, no detours and no surrender. And at no point did that proposition sound like a chore, at no point did we think twice, we just went for it.

So confident were we in the multifaceted capability of the R8 that we arose the next day with no hint of reluctance or reverence for the journey ahead. This may sound trivial, the notion of long journey in a £156,420 car not offending two automotive journalists, but to be

frank, if someone had asked me to do that in the majority of hot hatches on the market, I’d have been a touch apprehensive.

On a journey like that, so much more than just cabin space, creature comforts and suspension come in to play. Boredom, arguments with passengers and more can be avoided if a car is constantly engaging you in every task it’s given, whether it be slugging down motorways or catching air on rollercoaster B-roads.

It’s a tall order to exit a car after a seriously long journey feeling as good as you did when you left, and don’t be fooled into thinking that emerging from a Bentley after any drive will give you this result. On our journey from Cornwall to Braemar, the R8 covered 649.4 miles in 10 hours, with the on-board computers recording an average speed of 67mph and fuel consumption of 21.2 miles per gallon.

And it was a pleasure. Granted, it may not have had the drama of a more exotic supercar offering, nor 106

the comfort of a land yacht or the charm of a classic, but did you ever send a meal back at a restaurant for being ‘too complete’? Audi has never marketed the R8 in the pretentious fashion other supercar manufacturers do. At no point has this car been put forward as an ethereal connector between man and machine, nor some purveyor of an existential release from reality. It has been positioned as, and always received as, a very, very good car. A great car, in fact, and in the supercar world it has always been the yardstick for allround capability.

That’s what I want in a supercar.

Usable excellence; a heightened experience over a normal performance car in an utterly usable package. If you want charismatic connection, get an old Mini. If you want mind-bending performance in a car you can pick your nan up in, get an R8. And if you want a Huracan, please don’t talk to me.

© Google

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WHERE WE STAYED

THE FIFE ARMS BRAEMAR SCOTLAND I’ve seldom had more difficulty describing something as I have my experience at The Fife Arms, spouted out to frankly anyone who’d listen with a maniacal look of pure hysteria on my face.

On paper, this place really shouldn’t work: a Victorian coaching inn situated in sleepy Braemar that has absorbed countless pieces of modern art in some form of aesthetic osmosis, but I was captivated from arrival to departure.

WORDS: JAMES BANNISTER PHOTOS: SIM CANETTY-CLARKE

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I’m almost inclined not to go into the fine details of the hotel, so that any reader of this piece feels compelled to experience it themselves. Alas, this would render me unemployed and unlikely to have the distinct pleasure of visiting such hotels as ‘work’, so I will try my best to explain the majesty of this hotel.

Despite previously winning the Sunday Times Hotel of the Year award, the Fife Arms remains something of a secret gem, perhaps closely guarded by some wishing to keep it all to themselves. Thanks to the custodianship of the co-founders of the Hauser & Wirth art gallery empire, over 16,000 pieces of art and antiquities are expertly positioned throughout the hotel. Have a drink by the fire and you’ll lock eyes (or at least attempt to) with a Picasso. Sneak out for a cigar, as we did, and you’re greeted by the sight of “Spider” by Louise Boreouis, a humongous metal arachnid sculpture – really quite something to behold with the lapping of a local stream in the background.

These artistic delights are peppered throughout the hotel: a stoic piece of architecture in itself that needs no embellishment but somehow looks all the better for it. But it’s not

the surroundings, nor the perfectly judged and executed menu in the arrestingly beautiful dining room, that are the real takeaway from a night at the Fife Arms. So often, the premise of a luxury hotel in which no ask is too great, where staff will cater to your every need and jump through any hoop, often leaves a feeling of clinical disconnection. It seems the staff are grown in some hospitality laboratory (or perhaps raised free-range at Soho Farmhouse) and after a few days you just want to talk to some real people.

I’m aware you may be reading this and thinking that for a hotel so unique in its design, for me to focus on the people is wrong, but they really were the standout feature. The staff at The Fife Arms, and indeed the guests within it, are like members of a secret club celebrating the finer things in unpretentious fashion. This is yet another incredible feature of the hotel – how on earth can a five-star hotel, stuffed to the rafters with millions of pounds worth of irreplaceable art, be so entirely devoid of stuffiness, pretence and snooty pompousness?

So welcoming and warm is the ambience that your desire to explore every inch of hotel is unencumbered by any concerns about upsetting staff 109

or guests, and a quick spin around the hotel turns in to an hour-long exploratory adventure in itself. My millennial attention span is rarely held steady in any gallery, and yet I found myself engrossed in the space like a genuinely cultured person. On arrival, my first goal was to head to the attached rustic public pub (The Flying Stag), seeking the familiar tartan and Tennants combination I had so missed as a repatriated Scotsman, but I didn’t come anywhere close – the wonders of The Fife Arms continue to amaze.

These details combine, leaving the outside world I reluctantly return to just so underwhelming. Even one night in this hotel will render nine out of 10 stays elsewhere dull and without character. There’s a magic in the air of The Fife Arms, the kind that’s only created by genuinely passionate people with exceptional taste coming together to make something special.

It’s the kind of essence that every hotel would give the world to obtain: an authenticity that I haven’t encountered elsewhere. No, it’s not cheap, but you get what you pay for. In fact, in the case of The Fife Arms, you get so much more – and I will never, ever be able to describe just what that is.

S C O R C H E D E A R T H WORDS: ALEX GOY PHOTOS: MARK BRAMLEY / ALAMY

IT WAS IMPOSSIBLE TO MISS THE DEVASTATION OF THE AUSTRALIAN BUSHFIRES AT THE END OF 2019. OF COURSE, THEY’D BEEN RAGING FOR FAR LONGER THAN MAINSTREAM NEWS COVERED THEM, AND FOR LONG AFTER. AREAS OF FOREST THE SIZE OF FOOTBALL PITCHES, SMALL COUNTRIES, AND LATTERLY LARGE COUNTRIES WERE TURNED FROM LUSH GREEN HABITATS TO EXPANSES OF BLACKENED MATCHSTICKS LITTERED WITH ASH AND CHARRED WILDLIFE. IT WAS, AND REMAINS, HARROWING TO THINK ABOUT.

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It’s easy, however, to sit on a sofa and think about how awful it is, how unfortunate it is for those who lost houses, jobs, and even families. How sad it is for the koalas who didn’t make it, and those that escaped with charred paws. It’s what most of the world has done, and raised millions in aid as a result of doing. The news shows the worst of a situation, though. Going there gives you a more complete picture.

Leaving Bathurst in a shiny Lotus Evora GT410 Sport, whether you’re into climate change or not, you’ll agree that hotfooting it away from 43-degree heat can only be

a good thing. That heat, though, was a key contributor to the fires themselves. Dry grass, big heat... it was only matter of time. While some fires have been put down to arson (although according to the AFP none of the megafires were started that way), others have been attributed to ‘firebugs’ (one local snorted at the idea), discarded glass bottles amplifying sunlight and other factors. It’s hard to imagine something like this happening in a place like the UK, where the mercury rarely tips above 35 for more than a few days.

The start of the drive was smooth, the car’s supercharged 112

3.5-litre V6 barely troubled by New South Wales’ bizarrely low speed limits – seeing more than 60mph permitted is a rarity. The slow cruise gives time to see the outside world. The vistas are stunning, but not lush and green.

They’re dry, bleached by the constant sun. Trees and bush not so dependent on rainfall shine like emeralds in the distance.

Hills roll, roads twist and undulate; it’s a good, if warm, place to be. Driving into Bilpin, the forests close in, framing the grey tarmac with green, brown, and sandy beige hues... you forget that there had been fires at all.

THE COLLAPSED TREES SHOW BRIGHT ORANGE CORES SHROUDED IN BLACKNESS. YOU FEEL GUILT. THE GENTLE HUM OF THE V6 NO LONGER ENJOYABLE BUT A BUZZ ATTACKING YOUR CONSCIENCE. ‘HOW DARE YOU BE HERE. HOW CAN YOU DRIVE A CAR THROUGH THIS AND DO NOTHING...’

Then you see it. You can see through the trees, their trunks no longer grey, but thick, acrid black. Debris lies on the road, having flaked off structures that could no longer support it. The collapsed trees show bright orange cores shrouded in blackness. You feel guilt. The gentle hum of the V6 no longer enjoyable but a buzz attacking your conscience. ‘How dare you be here. How can you drive a car through this and do nothing...’

Stopping reveals a side effect you’re not told about: There’s no natural noise. Even the breeze seems hesitant to make itself

known. The sound of rubber on tarmac as cars trundle by, plus idle chatter from tourists and locals alike, is all you really hear.

The traditional bird calls, insect clicks, rustling of leaves, and the like, just aren’t there. It’s spooky.

A ways away in Oberon, a chat with one of Australia’s millions of volunteer firefighters was eye-opening. He was out in the bush with neighbours, friends, colleagues over the holiday period trying to stop the flames from taking more than they already had. He commented that his perspective on the trees had changed: they were beautiful until 113

you had one exploding in your face due to the heat. It was easy to see how that might take the edge off.

He spotted the Evora (well, its luminous orange paint) and a big grin spread across his face. His reaction went some way to silence the guilty voice, but not entirely.

Back on the road, the stark contrast between burnt and pristine jarred. What we didn’t see from our couches was how much infrastructure damage occurred.

Crews were deep into the hills and valleys repairing power lines, bits of road; vital stuff to keep the dayto-day going. Each one we passed gave a happy wave, the angry

Evora apparently giving a small orange boost to hard, hot work.

Well, either that or they called us tossers as we drove away.

Outside of the affected areas, the voice quietened, and there was space to enjoy the car. Its six-speed manual is a joy to use – notchy enough to let you know you’re doing something right, but easy enough that you won’t develop a massive bicep. The engine’s 410bhp and 302lb/ft of torque are delivered to the road through the rear wheels. Thanks to a supercharger, power delivery is urgent but linear – it’s a

smooth way to gather pace. Lotus’ handling is legendary for a reason – tilt the wheel into a bend and it glides from apex to apex. Over the rough stuff, it’s not the smoothest car in the world, but it’s hardly a back-breaker. There’s enough room in there to stretch out, too.

Throw your bags in the back, pick a road, and just go for a few days.

The cabin, despite the enormously sonorous V6 sat just behind it, is quiet enough to have a decent conversation. And although the Evora is the thick end of a decade old, it’s a fine, angry-looking thing.

What about that guilt, though?

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If we’re going to stave off further disasters of this magnitude what can automotive types do about it? Well, the Evora’s 1,300kg (ish) kerbweight means its motor needn’t strain itself too much to hustle. Lighter cars is a good start.

A switch to electric (something Lotus knows a thing or two about right now) and renewable energy seems like an ideal avenue to explore as well. For now, though, the best we can do is think greener, look after the joint, and learn from our mistakes. After all, we’ve only got one planet, and it’d be terrible to break it.

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KARIM “You know, that guy who fixed the Jaguar on the side of the road in Tibet?”

INTERVIEW: TIM HUTTON

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“HE THOUGHT T H AT L I T T L E 14-YEAR-OLD ME SHOULD BE THE O N E T O H AV E T H E CAR. 11 YEARS DOWN THE LINE N O W, I L I K E T O T H I N K T H AT I T WA S S E N T T O T H E RIGHT PERSON A N D T H AT I ’ M MAKING HIM PROUD”

Tim Hutton: Karim, tell me about your earliest motoring memory that you feel got you into this world you’re in now.

Karim: “I suppose the earliest memory that I’ve got when it comes to classic cars is watching my father and uncle in the workshop, I spent a lot of time down there. I realised that every time they opened a bonnet or boot, they pressed down and depressed the suspension. And I’d figured that was the thing that made you a mechanic.

So I used to spend my childhood trying to compress the suspension and analysing what was going wrong with the car. Clearly, I had no idea, but it definitely sparked my imagination to actually learn what’s going on with the car.”

T: What is it about vintage cars that made you want to work on them over modern cars?

K: “Vintage cars have always had a part of my heart. I spent my childhood going to lots of different steam fairs and classic-car shows around the

country. I was just always addicted to the smell and the look of all the cars. I have always believed that these classic and vintage cars should be used, they shouldn’t be show babies. My father used to use his vintage car to go to work every day, rain or shine. I’ll never forget the time we got stuck in the snow because we were using it as a daily driver. But you find a way around it and it’s exactly what people would have done back in the day.”

T: Yes, I totally agree. You mentioned to me that when your father passed away, he left you a family heirloom?

K: “I’ll never sell it, I’ll end up living in it before I sell it! When I was 14, my father passed away and left me a 1934 Standard 10. For some reason, despite me having an older half-brother and two older half-sisters, he thought that little 14-year-old me should be the one to have the car. Now, 11 years down the line, I like to think it was sent to the right person and that I’m making him proud. I’ve currently got the engine in pieces, but it’s ready to go back together again. I’ve rebuilt all 118

the brakes, gearbox and transmission of the car. Hopefully this year I can get it out to a few events and start using it regularly again.”

T: That would be great to see on the road. Obviously with vintage cars it’s not like there’s a parts supplier out there. So have you had to learn the craft of manufacturing parts from scratch and how did that come about?

K: “I think the manufacture of parts is something that you can take great pride in. When you look at something that’s old and broken and you look back after you’ve spent three days scratching your head on how to make it and then you’ve bought the materials and you’ve spent far too many hours that you can’t book making the part.

You look back and think ‘I’ve just generated this part in my own hands’.

It’s a great feeling to know that’s going to continue in the car thereon.

“A huge part of what I do relies on knowing certain people in the industry, whether that’s to get good parts or have good machining done. I tend to

find there’s always somebody who knows something about a part that you can’t get. But again, that comes from relationships you build up over time and I’m very lucky I have those relationships with certain people in the industry that can give me advice or pointers on where these special parts are hidden across the world.”

T: Bringing it up to the current day, tell us about your new workshop that you have…

K: “Pendine Works is quite a fresh company at the moment, but already we can’t fit any more cars in! We’re trying to do a lot of event support this year: taking clients’ cars, preparing them and seeing them all the way through, doing the events, bringing them back for the post-race or postevent checks and keeping them tucked away for the customers, so that when they come to their cars, they’ve got a car that works and that they have confidence in. I love doing engines, transmissions, gearboxes and subtle modifications to the car to keep them running and reliable. But it all comes

down to old-school engineering and using the original skills they would have used years ago to keep the cars in the best shape they can.”

T: Okay, Karim, that’s your day-to-day work, but you’ve made quite a name for yourself through being a mechanic at events that’ll turn his hand to anything. Does that give you quite a buzz, working that way?

K: “It’s definitely a buzz. I mean, it’s very flattering for you to say that, but how I sort of got my name about there in the first place was I used to pay to go to events and turn up with a boot full of tools and hang around the paddock. Every time a car was broken down that I might be able to fix it, I’d jump in and say, ‘Oh, I got my tools in the car.’ All of a sudden, especially with the way I look, people started recognising me as the lad that’ll sort it... ‘Karim’s here. He’ll fix it. You can see him in the distance, go chase him down!’

“I think one of the things I pride myself on – and it’s something you don’t see 119

too much across the industry – is that people think you need to have buckets and buckets of tools, the best tools that you can find and you need huge toolboxes to put them in. With these classic and vintage cars, if you can’t fix them with a handful of spanners, you’re the wrong person for the job. Half the tools in my toolbox are either special tools that I’ve made up for certain cars or jobs, or just your bog-standard tools that vintage cars used to come with. Oh, and a good set of hammers (you can never have too many hammers), some screwdrivers, sockets, spanners and you’re basically good to go. The amount of things you can do on the side of the road with a handful of tools never ceases to amaze me.”

T: Talking about the side of the road, last year you were supporting a pretty mad event. Tell us about that and the image that ‘broke the internet’ temporarily…

K: “The image that broke the internet, haha! I worked on a rally from Chengdu in China to Kathmandu

“I OFFERED THIS MONEY U P, A L L T H E S E P E O P L E H A D G AT H E R E D R O U N D A N D I E N D E D UP HAGGLING THEM DOWN TO MY PRICE. AS I PULLED THE EXACT AMOUNT OF MONEY O U T O F M Y WA L L E T, T H E Y LOOKED SHOCKED, AS IF I HAD PLANNED IT ALL, WHICH C L E A R LY I H A D ” in Nepal and we went over the Himalayas. Some of the scenes I saw were just insane. Some of the breakdowns that we had on vehicles and people were second to none.

I mean, we were really up against ourselves there and against all odds.

“All the repairs that were done were running repairs, from damage that happened or fuel filters blocking up. We nearly ran out of fuel filters, because you’re pumping dirty fuel out of the tanks there. Back to that image though, there was a gorgeous XK120 owned by a chap called Phillip Haslam who did the entire rally, rain or shine or snow, with the roof down on his car. And he’s a real tough bloke. He’s had two knee replacements and he’d been all over the world in this car and competed in some insane rallies. He’s a lovely, lovely chap and his wife as well is an absolutely amazing woman.

“While we were on the Tibetan Plateau, I discovered that his car had broken down and his chassis quite literally had cracked in two. We’d sent several service teams and people who were doing the event out there to find him and help. He came back, his car was looking pretty sad and unfortunately he had to get into one of our Land Cruisers to do the rest of the rally, with his car on the back of a lorry.

Two days later, when we got off the Tibetan Plateau, we were in our hotel; I went to see the event organiser and said, “Look, I’ve spoken to Philip and I know the risks, but whatever it takes, I’m going to make sure this car finishes the rally. Just leave me

behind tomorrow with my toolbox – which didn’t have any tools in it – the recovery driver and a translator; I want the rally to continue no matter what.”

“The next day, we woke up and drove off into the distance in this pickup truck and went scrounging around to try to find a welding workshop. We happened to find one, but it seems all they use in Tibet is stick welders. And I wasn’t prepared to weld the chassis with a stick welder. But with a bit of to and fro, we managed to find a bloke who went to the local government contractors who were building a new railway, bribed them and took a MIG welder off them. However, this was so big that we then had to find somebody with a pickup truck and bribe them to drive it over! So I’m stood there, all these people around me, with nothing but a translator and this pickup truck arrives and we end up cutting a piece of metal out using a gas axe.

“I made a template out of paper to repair the chassis and to my amazement the owner cut it out with a gas axe, his only protection being a safety squint to protect him from the flame. We had no masks, no welding kit, no safety equipment whatsoever.

And we ended up cutting the chassis then getting it jigged, straightened out and welding it all back into place, grinding it all down. And amazingly, it worked. Unfortunately, they all seemed to think that I was paying a lot more than I was willing to pay.

However, the customer had given me X amount of money in cash to spend for him.

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“So I offered this money up, all these people had gathered round and I ended up haggling them down to my price.

As I pulled the exact amount of money out of my wallet, they looked shocked, as if I had planned it all, which clearly I had. So we got back on the road and I arrived back at our hotel at about one in the morning. Everyone was in the bar and gave a round of applause.

Phillip did the rest of the rally on that chassis until it got back to the UK. It was an amazing thing to do, to see how happy he was, so thankful. And that’s what it’s all about. Finding the problem, fixing it and making the customer happy.”

T: When it comes to events, are you still surprised at the amount of people who turn up with an unprepared car.

They’ve literally had it checked out the last time they used it, put it away, and then just turned up to a gruelling event?

K: “It’s quite worrying how many times a car turns up that isn’t prepared for an event. I appreciate it happens to us all. But at the end of the day, there are certain checks that need to be done to keep a car safe and running.

Sometimes it’s simple little things, but it’s these little things that the customer always looks at and it’s the little things that come and bite you on the ass at the end of the day.

Sometimes the owners don’t quite have the keen eye they used to. We’re always there to help out; everyone’s willing to lend a hand to whoever needs it, really.”

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THE KEYS NEED TO BE PA S S E D D O W N . T H E R E ’ S NO POINT IN KEEPING THESE CARS LOCKED UP IN GARAGES AND NOT BEING USED. GET THEM OUT THERE. IF YOU D O N ’ T U S E I T, S E L L I T. I F I T ’ S N O T C O M P L E T E LY PRECIOUS TO YOU THEN LET SOMEBODY ELSE E N J O Y I T, PA S S T H E K E Y S ON AND LET SOMEBODY E L S E D R I V E I T. T: Is there a dream engine rebuild you’d love to do? Is there a phonecall you’d love to get?

K: “I’d love it if somebody turned around to me tomorrow and said, ‘I’ve got a Merlin engine and I want you to rebuild it!’ I’d quite literally get rid of a couple of cars in the workshop just to be able to do it. I’d probably end up doing it for free actually, just for satisfaction. I mean, yeah, I know, that’s a dangerous thing. That’s the problem with me. I end up doing too much for free, because I enjoy doing what I’m doing. I mean, I don’t work a day in my life! But no, I think a Merlin would definitely be up there. Just the sound of them. I watched one run at a Rolls-Royce show about six years ago and it blew up my work colleague’s partner’s dress. And I thought, I want one of those and I’d love to build one!”

T: So obviously you’ve built a great reputation with vintage and classiccar work, but tell me about going to

pick up Pandas off of driveways...

K: “About a year and a half ago, Kat, a good friend of mine asked me to go collect a Panda for her partner Jonny.

I’d ask my partner to come along with me for the ride; they’re used to going to collect really nice cars with me.

When we got there, it was this little blue Panda that we had to drive about 150 miles back down the motorway. I’d fallen in love with the car by the time I got back and completely realised why Jonny wanted one. A few months went by and we were sat in Wriggly Monkey Brewery at Bicester Heritage a few days before Christmas. I’d had one too many beers and Jonny had asked me whether I wanted to buy a Panda that he’d found on Facebook. It was up for something like £300.

“I instantly sent a drunken message and bought the non-runner on the spot. Two days before Christmas Jonny and I drove over to Cardiff with a boot full of tools. I realised the car’s doors 122

were slightly rotten and knocked her down to £125. She said to me, ‘Where’s your recovery truck? Where’s your trailer? Where’s your tow vehicle?’ I said, ‘What do you mean?’ She said, ‘Well, you do realise the car hasn’t run in eight months?’ I said, ‘Yeah, I read the Facebook ad.’ She said, ‘Right. So how are you going to get it back?’ I said, ‘Well, I’ve got a boot full of tools, I’m going to fix it.’

“I looked into the history of the car with them, about what they’d done and what they’d changed and soon came to the conclusion that somebody put the timing belt on wrong. So I got the belt off, timed it all up. And I knew it was a non-interference engine, so there can’t have been too much damage. After putting the timing belt into the right place, off we went. We’re hoping to drive it to Sardinia in the next year or two. Do a little Panda run down there.”

T: Cool. Sounds good. So with Pendine Works, what’s your dream of how it

evolves in the next five years or so?

K: “In about five years time, we’d like to be in a position where we have an accumulation of clients and cars that we look after that are repeatedly going to certain events across the world and we’ve built a reputation for ourselves that our cars turn up, the customer jumps in, drives them, has fun and comes back to us. And that our engines are going round in different rallies and cars that people are using and being enjoyed for many miles.”

T: It’s clearly key for you that the cars which come through your business are getting used...

K: “100%. I mean, for me, if I was to find out that I’ve done a restoration or an engine build on a car and two years later, it comes to me for an oil change or a service, or somebody says, ‘Oh, can you get this recommissioned again?’. I’d say, ‘What do you mean? It doesn’t need recommissioning; I built

the engine on it two years ago’ and they reply ‘Yeah, but it hasn’t moved since you’ve done it.’ That’s awful for me. Engines should be out there nearly popping off the limits or being used and run, because these cars love it if you do that. You can restore a car to where you like, but if you leave it parked up for 20 years, it’s not going to be in the same condition as you left it.

And all that hard work and effort and skill is wasted.”

T: On a slightly miserable note, do you feel like our days are numbered, the time is now and that we need to be enjoying these cars while we still can?

K: “I think with all the stuff that’s happening with fuelling and tax and low-emission zones, there’s definitely going to be a sense of what we all call our hobby diminishing in the future. I think one of the biggest things that we need to do is get young people involved in classic cars more and more. And there’s some fantastic people out there 123

making sure that happens. People like Merlin at Duke of London – what he’s doing is amazing and who he’s getting involved in classic cars. It’s really helping the industry.

“We’ll see what happens in the future, but I think as long as we can get younger people, the next generation in, whether that’s fixing the cars or driving the cars or buying the cars, it has to be passed on. The keys need to be passed down. There’s no point in keeping these cars locked up in garages and not being used. Get them out there. If you don’t use it, sell it.

If it’s not completely precious to you, then let somebody else enjoy it, pass the keys on and let somebody else drive it. And that will go on in the car’s history and its life and be the next generation of people using it. And that could spark somebody else’s interest, which passes our recommendation to someone else and gets them spotted to come join us in the classic-car industry.”

JONNY SHEARS MARKET REVIEW If you think I’m going to tell you to buy this, sell that, Fiat Pandas are up and Ferraris are down… you’re wrong. Definitely buy a Panda though!

Right then, caveat out of the way, where do I begin... the end of 2019, December to be exact. BoJo is now officially prime minister and let’s face it, it had been a tough year for the used-car salesmen, or as we like to call ourselves ‘collector car brokers’. It was a very unsettled market caused by global changes. By December at least we had some certainty in the world, we knew who our prime minister was and the Brexit argument (god, I miss Brexit!) had finally been settled. Some glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel, then, whether we liked the outcome or not: at least we actually had some solid foundations to work with.

As a new decade dawned, classic-car sales picked up and cars were starting to achieve the prices they deserve more regularly. As Retromobile – the first major European event/classic motor trade AGM of the year – rolled round, there was a buzz in the air and the Parisian bars were reaping the benefits of prospering dealers. 2020 was kicking off nicely, or so we all thought…

Then, just like that, almost overnight, the world stopped and that coronavirus thing that was occasionally being mentioned in the news got a real name: “Covid-19”. A real threat to both people and the economy. I could write about how I’m sitting here in late March as the world goes into lockdown and the stock-market graph for the past month resembles a six-year-old’s Etch-A-Sketch drawing.

That I’m expecting not to do any trade for at least the next few weeks. I’m sure most of us are thinking the same. That is, of course, unless you own a pasta, soap or toilet-paper company, but I’m a cup-half-full kind of guy and the reality is, when you stop, catch your breath and think about it, it’s not the end of the world. Sure, it may feel like it right now,

but if you look deeper, there is an upside, I promise!

Adversity contains within it the seeds of opportunity and growth. With exchange rates falling and levelling out across nations, the market has become truly global. The cost of a car in Europe, England, Switzerland and America is, in short, its true value. Government initiatives to provide people with low-cost loans and cash injections in a bid to avoid another recession and keep money coming into the country could potentially provide opportunities to free up capital and finally buy that E-Type you’ve been stalling on since June 2016.

As Brexit, Trump and what seems like dozens of new prime ministers and elections have taught us, we will prevail and make it out the other side. This isn’t the end. The sooner we all realise this the sooner the economy will start to bounce back.

For the opportunistic buyers rubbing their hands together looking to capitalise on someone’s possible misfortune. I hate to break it to you, but you won’t. Values of cars will not dramatically fall – they did that already during 2017 and 2018.

Sure, there’s always an anomaly here and there, but 2019 proved prices are stable as at last buyers and sellers finally came to accept the reality of the market, its correction and the true value of cars.

It’s an enthusiast’s market and cars are being enjoyed. The good cars are selling for deserving figures while average and lesser cars are being enjoyed and loved, warts and all. Most importantly, cars are selling for their actual worth, not what someone thinks they’re worth now or in a year’s time; you can see this by the cars that often don’t sell in auctions. Some bruised owners are still trying to get their money back.

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Although it seems almost selfish to think about treating yourself right now, there has been no better time maximise on exchange rates and rather than tie your money up in ever-changing, mostly plummeting stocks, buy something more stable, tangible and enjoyable. Hell, at least you have something to show for it in the garage! Now, I’m not saying go and invest in a classic car; while wise decisions can sometimes be profitable, that’s entirely the wrong reason to buy.

What I’m saying is make the most of a bad situation to invest in yourself and your life experiences: acquire something you’ll cherish, something the kids will love, something that’ll turn heads in a sea of mundane, introduce you to new people and places and ultimately put a smile on your face among all of this adversity.

There is a future. Sure, there will be some everyday lifestyle changes, much like 9/11 led to the now-normal strictsecurity, big-brother world we live in, but ultimately Covid-19 will be another pothole on our journey. The sooner we get on with our lives, the sooner we will learn to live with it.

Naturally, as we come out the other side of this (hopefully short and sharp) shock, there’ll be a sudden increase in sales, but if possible you should strike while the iron’s hot – or cold, in this case – and beat the inevitable resurgence as we come out the other side. Capitalise on the best of a bad situation and acquire the car you’ve been looking for, before someone else does!

Jonny Shears is the manager of Pendine based at Bicester Heritage as well as a keen historic racing driver.

Photo: Amy Shore

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Please see website for more details.

Please see website for more details.

MATHER COLLECTABLE MOTORCARS IS A COTSWOLD BASED COMPANY SPECIALISING IN THE SALE OF FINE MOTORCARS UNITS 33 & 34 NORTHWICK PARK, BLOCKLEY, MORETON-IN-MARSH, GL56 9RF T: +44 (0)1386 701474 E: INFO@MATHERCOLLECTABLES.COM WWW.MATHERCOLLECTABLES.COM

Sell with the UK’s most successful online classic auction house

Just 5% commission - no buyer’s fees £3.6 million sold in 2019 @ 82% sale rate themarket.co.uk +44 (0) 1865 521 088 6 Station Yard, Abingdon, Oxfordshire, UK, OX13 6RX

Visit us at AutomobiliaMonterey~Aug 10-12, 2020

A ROUP E 8V G L A R TEG PB HF IN GR O U DELTA A I C O RS A N C A L 4 PB S 8 U 8 A 19 GR O DELT EVO 2 ANCIA Y L L L 5 A 8 19 7R IA 03 LANC 1984

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THE CAMPION COLLECTION PASSION. CARS. EXPERTISE.

Girardo.com

1982 LANC 1981 L IA LC ANCIA 1 GR O 1983 LANC UP VI BETA IA LC MONT 2 GR O ECAR UP C LO TU RBO G ROUP V

OFFERED FOR PRIVATE TREATY SALE UK +44 (0)203 621 2923 | Italy +39 02 36003241 | info@girardo.com

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