Tim Grigsby | Veteran Cars, Classic Raffles & a Life Lived at Full Throttle

Use code SAM15 for 15% off your chance to win a classic car with Vintage and Classic Car Competitions:
https://competitions.vintageandclassiccarhire.com/

Sam Grange-Bailey (The Old Car Lady) sits down with Tim Grigsby of Vintage and Classic Car Competitions for a conversation that goes well beyond the prize draw business. Tim grew up surrounded by veteran cars and larger-than-life characters, raced everything from karts to single seaters, and has built one of the longest-running classic car raffle businesses in the UK.

They get into the real story behind classic car prize draws, why five years in has been the hardest thing Tim has ever done, and why integrity is the only thing that keeps it working. There is also a 1904 Cadillac, a brake rod welded in a French barn, a Ferrari 308 with 26,000 miles he cannot bring himself to drive, and a mum who swapped a Morris Eight for a Rolls Royce 20hp and has never looked back.

Featured Stories

Born Into It: Tim’s dad wrote the technical bible on pre-war Rolls Royce engines. His mum was a BBC makeup girl who may or may not have written off Jim Clark’s car near Tower Bridge. Tim never really stood a chance.

The Brighton Run and the Cars That Should Be Driven: Tim has been doing the London to Brighton since 1971, when he was six, in his dad’s 1904 Cadillac. He still does it today in Annabel, the same car. His view on veteran cars sitting in bank vaults is not a diplomatic one.

The Raffle Business: What It Actually Takes: Tim was one of the first to run classic car prize draws and is honest it has been the hardest business he has ever built. Facebook spend alone ran to £750,000 this year. The margins are not what people with calculators think they are.

The Roadside Repair That Lasted 10 Years: On a rally in France, Tim fixed a broken brake rod in a stranger’s barn using a welder and some thread. A decade later he spotted the same car on the Brighton run. The repair was still there.

A Fleet Worth Talking About: A 1904 Cadillac. A 1914 Sunbeam. A 1923 Rolls Royce 20hp called Daphne. A 69 Morgan Four Four that one lady drove as her only car for 50 years. A Ferrari 308 GTS with 26,000 miles. And a 1977 Lola that takes Copse flat out.

What You’ll Learn

Why running a classic car prize draw is nothing like it looks from the outside. How the British sports car market differs from the supercar lottery crowd. Why paying proper money always gets you the repeat call. What it costs to race a gearbox kart when you are built like a rugby player. And why smart motorways are, in Tim’s words, extremely stupid.

Key Questions

• Is the classic car prize draw model as easy as it looks? Tim is emphatic that it is not. Five years in, three world-class businesses behind him, and this has been the hardest. The people getting rich are mostly Mark Zuckerberg.
• Who actually wins these cars? Tim’s database is built on proper enthusiasts, not lottery hopefuls. A woman with a blown-up VW Polo bought one ticket and won an MGB. Those are the stories that keep him going.
• Should classic cars be used or preserved? Tim’s answer is unambiguous. He has driven his 1914 Sunbeam all over Europe and thinks cars sitting in bank vaults are a waste of what they are.

A Nod To

Vintage and Classic Car Competitions, Tim’s prize draw business. Search online and on social media. Use code SAM15 for 15% off your chance to win a classic car. Links in the show notes or follow this link:

https://competitions.vintageandclassiccarhire.com/

Tim is racing his 1977 Lola at the Oulton Park Gold Cup this year and Sam will be there for a pit lane visit and Part 2. Watch this space.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:04

Hi, and welcome back to the Wheels and Deals Podcast. I'm Sam Grange Bailey, the old car lady, and today I'm joined by Tim Grigsby. He runs the Vintage and Classic Car Competition website where he gives away incredible classic cars every week. He's a historic racer, he restores classic and vintage cars, and he's someone who grew up surrounded by the kind of cars and characters that most of us only get to read about. We talk about his family history, including the London to Brighton run, what it was really like in the motor trade back in the day, and some of the brilliant cars that Tim's got coming up as prizes. It's a fascinating car conversation, and I hope you're going to love it. Oh, and do stick around to the end because there's also a special listener discount in it for you. Right, let's get into it. How did you find the cars? Or how did the cars find you? How did it all start?

SPEAKER_00 0:51

I didn't have a choice, Sam. I was my parents were car nuts, and that was that. And interestingly, my parents th there's another connection with me is boats as well. So the two big passions in my life are cars and boats. And they were also the common denominators with my parents. And my parents met at the local yacht club. My dad was a boat builder. He used to build uh racing boats.

SPEAKER_01 1:13

In the UK?

SPEAKER_00 1:14

Yeah, yeah. Back in the day, it was the I live on the East Coast, the South East Coast, and actually that's the sort of epicentre of what it was then, not so much now, but it was then the epicentre of boat building and all things marine, really. So we had this big connection with boats, but then my dad started getting interested in cars, and his first car was a three-litre lagonda.

SPEAKER_01 1:36

I came home from the hospital in a three-litre lagonda. Did you?

SPEAKER_00 1:41

Yeah, and then that led in into a passion for Rolls-Royce's. And a friend of his was a local farmer, and he sadly passed away a couple of years ago, and that was Charles Tabor. Now Charles was president of the Henry Royce Foundation because he was very into part of the and the Rolls-Royce Club big was actually founded with his money. He lent money to the club to buy the Hunt House of Paulersbury, which is their was their headquarters. It's now the Henry Royce Foundation owned that. So there was a the old Rolls-Royce is really where it started for him. And then one day he joined the Veteran Car Club and he came home. There was this scheme, it was called the acquisition scheme. And Beringham, obviously cars now that are worth loads of money were worth very little back then, comparatively. And there was a scheme to buy a veteran car through this through the club, and he came home with this 1904 Cadillac, which was a single cylinder, big thumping, great big, powerful veteran, 1904. And he rebuilt that. And and that's a a passion started for the veteran cars.

SPEAKER_01 2:57

What made your dad get into Edwardian cars?

SPEAKER_00 2:59

Was it really no veterans and Edwardians? It was just I think I think the engineering fascinated him. And he was also he became a very well known restorer of Rolls and Bentley. And he wrote the technical manuals on the Phantoms, and he also wrote the book Rolls-Royce Small Horsepower Engines, which is the Michael Grigsby.

SPEAKER_02 3:18

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 3:18

And my so dad wrote the book with a guy called Ron Haynes. Actually, Ron died before they wrote the book together, but my dad wanted his name on the title because his widow hadn't got he wanted her to have some of the royalties.

SPEAKER_01 3:32

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 3:34

It was nice of him. And but Ron had contributed, don't get me wrong, but I think I wrote that he finished it, he he did it. And it's the book now that every pre-war Rolls-Royce amateur engineer or professor referred to. It's that like the Bible for it's which is I'm immensely proud of him. Sadly, I lost my dad back in 1991. He died quite young. He was just under 52. But in fact it was 35 years last week that he died. But he left this legacy really. The legacy for me was the cars and the passion. And and it it's translated, I'm involved in the historic motorsport as and we race I raced 1977 Lola, slicks and wings car. I used to back in the day, going right back in the 80s, I used to race slicks and wings cars, which were a period in period at that time. But I've raced all sorts of stuff over the years. And it's always been interspersed with periods of sailing and boats because I've been involved in racing boats as well. And that was a carbon copy of my of my father's sort of life as well. He was involved in boats as well and cars. But then I didn't want it to, if that makes sense. I tried everything I could in a way. Don't bite it. No, it just happens, doesn't it? My mum was a makeup girl at the BBC back in the sixties, and she used to hang around with uh Jim Clark and Graham Hill and all those big named drivers back in the day as well. I think I'm right, and mum will probably put me right, she'll probably be quicker. She mum's still going, she's she's quite a character, my mother. Indomitable, I think, is a word. And she's still a bit of a party girl as it goes. But she's I think she wrote off Jim Clark's ACA's.

SPEAKER_01 5:04

Oh, that's a brilliant claim to fame.

SPEAKER_00 5:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:07

How did your mum and dad meet?

SPEAKER_00 5:09

They met at the local yacht club because my dad was building boats. My my grandparents, my my maternal grandparents were involved with the yacht club. And in fact, I still live about three minutes' walk from the yacht club. So and I'm still there, I'm still a member, and still I'm still actively involved in dinghy sailing and stuff like that. I say the Finn these days, Olympic class fin, which I think has become an old man's boat in some respects. Not certainly the fitness level that I'd need to compete at any great level, but we'd just have fun.

SPEAKER_01 5:36

So what sort of films was your mum working on then?

SPEAKER_00 5:38

She worked for the BBC, but I think uh there was a story about there was a guy called Reg Taverner who was very well known, and he he was an instrumental and fairly active member in the Veteran Car Club, and he got asked to source cars for the film Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines, which was filmed during the summer of 1964, and they it was filmed in a I think it was a pig farm. Anyway, it was in near High Wickham in Buckinghamshire. And uh they built the Brooklyn's track in the background, which was where the old car some of them were driving round the track.

SPEAKER_01 6:13

Yeah, I remember it. Oh yeah, it's great. I loved that. It was one of my favourite films when I was little.

SPEAKER_00 6:17

I think with all those lovely characters like Terry Thomas and Eric Sykes.

SPEAKER_01 6:21

It's very indicative of its time, isn't it?

SPEAKER_00 6:24

Oh definitely, yeah, yeah. In fact, but I remember once we were walking in I'm gonna digress here. We were walking once with my mum in the west end of London somewhere. And at the time, do you remember there used to be a sitcom called Sykes with Hattie Jakes? It was on every night, I think, in those days. It was like a half-hour sitcom. For my timing at that point, yeah, but I remember I I was we were walking along the road and uh this voice shouts out Sandra and we looked round and it's Eric Sykes. I was very impressed. I was about to say, Go by me, Mum knows all these people because she'd left the BBC once she had me. Anyway, they were filming this the those magnificent men, and uh my dad was driving an Itala, one of those great big Leviathan Ewardian races, around the this plywood banking, it was made of plywood. And he said he thought he was going to go through it because it you can imagine it's banked, so he's driving around at some pace to that must be where you get your bravery gene from, then racing. That maybe just a stupidity gene actually, but there we go. And um the whole thing was bending and bowing, and anyway, he was driving near Tyler. My mum was moonlighting doing some of the makeup because that that that was how it was. And uh and then the Red Lion Hotel in High Wickham had a last night party for the crew of cast, and that was where I was I was a result of that, apparently.

SPEAKER_01 7:38

But you were the party for the party.

SPEAKER_00 7:39

I was yeah, I was conceived in the after the last night party. So years later, I was in construction for a lot of my life, and we were doing a job in High Wickham in the Optagon Shopping Centre. I walked into town and the Red Lion Hotel, which is where this was, I was going to be demolished. And uh I thought I've got to go and see it before they pull it down because I knew this story. I went into the bar and I ordered a pint and I sat down and I said to the bar, it was one of th it really run down, it was a real estate, really, no sticky floor and I said to the barmaid, Oh, somewhere and I just couldn't resist saying somewhere up there, one of those rooms is where I was conceived. And she said, quick as a flash, Oh good, have you come to clear up the mess? Both my parents were I would say were characters. Well that well, my mum still is a character, and they they certainly like to live there and enjoy their lives. And the cars were very much a part of that. And I grew up with the the London to Brighton run being a big feature every year. I still do that today. I've got a Brighton car.

SPEAKER_01 8:38

I think a lot of people quite rightly see the London's Bright Run as being a very glamorous scene. But the reality is it is oily rag territory, isn't it, London to Brighton?

SPEAKER_00 8:48

Yeah, I think one of the things that I think is a shame is that the cars at one time were very accessible. If you were in things uh you didn't have to mortgage a house to buy one. But these days, of course, the prices have gone up exponentially because they are what they are, and and it's a shame that some cars are in the vaults of Japanese banks or they're so valuable they're deemed they just stay in museum as museum pieces. But I believe cars should be used.

SPEAKER_01 9:15

I know that a lot of the time accessibility to London to Brighton is dependent on having an eligible car has had a lot to do with the prices changing over recent years.

SPEAKER_00 9:23

It has, and the cars are up to uh and including 04, so anything that's 05 is worth considerably less because it's not something you'd use particularly. And and everything 04 before is is skyrocketed. I think when there were a lot more enthusiasts doing the run then. But there's that saying nostalgia isn't what it used to be. Looking back, that it was different, of course it's evolved. It never s and the event has become it its flavour, its culture has changed completely into For the better or for the worse. I don't think I could comment on that. I think there were some big characters. I mean, there were some that spring to mind. Michael Banfield was an amazing character. He was I think he was Mick Jagger's cousin. I'm not I might be wrong, but he was certainly he used to take the Rolling Stones around in a van in their early days. And i he was an amazing but I had a lot of time for people like that. There was the Bendel family that still do the run. Pauline is a friend of mine. In fact, I she've sadly lost her husband recently. And all these people are getting older. Her dad, Cecil Bendel, was an amazing character, Lieutenant Colonel, I believe, and he was one of these people I think that that led his troops into battle at in D-Day. And th they were just of their time, these amazing, larger than life people. And I think today maybe uh it's lost on me, but it doesn't seem to be quite the same. But there's uh good news is lots of young people are coming into the old cars, and that is wonderful.

SPEAKER_01 10:46

I think that there was a question mark a few years ago about the kids getting into it, which are ironically our age, which almost always second generation through our parents or even our grandparents. Whereas I think there are more people coming into it now as new starters, not necessarily kids of people that that have been in in the trade or into racing. And it's wonderful to see. And I think that the I think the internet's got a lot to answer for because I think people watch things on YouTube and think, oh, that looks cool, that looks good, I'll give that a go. Whereas I think our generation didn't have that view into the world. So you did tend to get into it through somebody you knew because it was the only real route to it, wasn't it?

SPEAKER_00 11:24

That's right, yeah. And I know we were chatting before about car dealers, and there were some amazing characters around my dad, and they were I think my dad was described once, and he won't mind me saying this if he's looking down, as a bit of a lovable rogue. And I remember at his funeral, I was 26, I was I was quite young when he died, and that my my grandmother and I, she was holding my arms, we walked out of the churchyard and after the funeral, and she said, Do you know, she said, he was a monkey, but everyone loved him.

SPEAKER_01 11:55

I think that describes the vast majority of 70s car dealers. Because they had to be. You couldn't make it work if you didn't have a twinkle in your eye. It you just couldn't have you couldn't have earned a living doing it.

SPEAKER_00 12:07

No, I agree, and it was a very intelligent man, my dad, and very clever, very capable. But that was always tinged with maybe trying to take a shortcut or two. Um you know what I'm talking about. And it's and some of the characters that were in his life were at his funeral.

SPEAKER_01 12:23

And they're all well I think the world's a worse place for them not being around.

SPEAKER_00 12:27

I agree with you, yeah. And I know what some of the I think some of the the magical thing about only fools, only fools and horses, was you had characters like Boise. They the thing is that I remember people like that. I know that it's over a larger than life and his laugh and the cigar. But it's not John Sullivan, I think was it John Sullivan or Richard Sullivan? I can't remember whoever wrote it. He had a real handle on that time and what it was like. And and I that's what it was like.

SPEAKER_01 12:55

If you talk to anybody our age that grew up in the motor trade, you've got Arthur Daly and Delboy, and you very affectionately look back on them as clearly based on true characters. There were people around like that, and they did do business like that. And it's very easy to watch it now and think it's all fiction. And it it's pretty close to fact, I think.

SPEAKER_00 13:15

It is pretty close to fact, and uh I think it was a time where the cars were more interesting as well. I was looking this morning, I'm not really a big fan of e-type Jags, but I was looking at one this morning for a guy we know. And uh they just don't a modern Jaguar and that they're just chalk and cheese, they're just completely different. It's night and day.

SPEAKER_01 13:36

Back in those days, first of all, not everybody was lucky enough to own a car. Most families certainly didn't have more than one. And I think that if you wanted to own an e-type, you had to have the money to buy an e-type. Whereas now it's everybody has a car, it's monthly payments. The soul has gone out of buying a car, I think, to a certain extent. And I don't think people have to appeal to the customers in the same way that they used to have to do in those days. For somebody to put the money down that an e-type cost, they had to really want it and they had to have the money. And I don't think that's the case anymore.

SPEAKER_00 14:11

No, you're right. And the way that modern cars are for me, they're soulless. I couldn't tell you what engine was in my car, really. I sometimes I get asked, or is that the V6? Or was that the do you know what I'm really sorry I don't know? And I was driving a Land Rover Discovery 5 until about two weeks ago, and I've just changed it for something else. But I was being asked that question all the time. Or is it the whatever combination or an acronym of letters? And I said, I've got I haven't got a clue. And people used to look at me very surprised because I thought, well, I thought you were a car man. Yeah, but not Not that kind of car. Yeah, not that kind of car. It's just it you put the key in it, you drive it. And it's and it's transport and it's comfortable and then it it's great for turning the trailer and then But it hasn't got whatever that X factor is.

SPEAKER_01 14:56

Here's the thing in your modern car, do you ever get in it and ask it nicely to start? No, exactly. But we talk to our old cars, don't we? Or I do anyway. We we communicate with them, we talk to them, we have relationships with them. And I don't do that with my modern car. Even my modern car's eleven years old. Even my daily isn't a modern a a new car, but yeah, I just think that I think that we've fallen out of love with buying cars as our daily drive.

SPEAKER_00 15:21

They just become a a something on the credit sheet, don't they? Everything's on tick. I I I don't actually buy cars from credit, that's one of the things I tend to wait till they're not worth as much and then just pay. And then I never seem to lose that much, really.

SPEAKER_01 15:35

Driving the 11-year-old Merck, you can't beat them for what you're low mileage for what you can pick them up for. They're incredible.

SPEAKER_00 15:42

They go on and on, don't they? I have one and I had an e-class estate, and I wish I hadn't sold it actually. The guy I sold it to is in a workshop, and that was four years ago. He's still driving around in it. All he's ever done is serve change the oil and put diesel in it.

SPEAKER_01 15:55

I've got an e I've got an E350, you can't beat it. I think I suppose as an industry, as a nation, whatever you want to call it, our relationship with cars has changed, and I think now it's almost a given that everybody has a car, and that's a huge step from the 70s when it wasn't a given. And families would buy a car and keep it for ten years.

SPEAKER_00 16:12

I know, and they'd do the repairs themselves, wouldn't they? And y you had oh the head gasket's gone. I'm gonna do the head oh, I'm gonna get it skinned, and then I'm gonna do the valves, and you bought the grinding paste, the little the little thing on stick, and you grind it, lap your valves in and get gradually the coarse and then the fine and then and all those skills, but you can't work on them now. And uh the last one I sold was I've had a Land Rover, I've had a few Land Rovers recently. I'm never having another one. They're just too stressful. You never know whether you're gonna arrive.

SPEAKER_01 16:42

I have a love-hate relationship with Range Rovers. We've got my husband drives them, and I love them when they're working, but you're just always waiting for that next light to come on, aren't you?

SPEAKER_00 16:53

I know. I've been lucky with Range Rovers. I've had one or two, and they're but then my luck ran out. And the last one we had was a Discovery 4. Yeah, Friday I believe. Yeah, and and then this last one, the Discovery 5, which is uh absolutely lovely to drive. It is quite literally one of the nicest cars I've ever been in for all sorts of reasons. But you're just going down the road, exactly waiting for the light to come on and you plug it in, it says, Oh, it's an O2 sensor. The last one was buried in the engine, and it cost me about 1700 quid to change the 20 pound part. And then it's fine again. Um anyway, it's gone.

SPEAKER_01 17:28

The problem we've always had with Range Rovers is whatever it's telling you is wrong, it's almost never that's wrong. It's the sensor that's wrong. But it's getting it's establishing that and then getting to it. And it's a 30p sensor, but it you end up spending two and a half grams sorting it out.

SPEAKER_00 17:42

I know just to find it, I know. So we're not doing Land Rovers anymore. They're owned by Tata anyway, aren't they? The Inking.

SPEAKER_02 17:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:49

And we had a gear selection module which popped up that then wouldn't pop back down again, so that was that. And it was stuck in the ramp in in my workshop. And we couldn't use the ramp for two weeks because we couldn't get the part because they'd been hacked. Do you remember that computer hack? So we couldn't get a part.

SPEAKER_01 18:04

Anyway, I despair of Do you remember when we all used to drive around and we'd have a kit in the boot? So you'd obviously have you'd have what everything you needed to change your tyre and your spare if you got a flat. You'd have a bottle of water in case you overheated. How many to if you the temperature gauge was getting a bit high, you had to pull over, let it cool down. You had water in it. But you could do basic maintenance at the side of it. A pair of tires in case your cam belt went. It was just people could and I know we you we joked about the egg in the radiator and the sawdust in the gearbox and all that kind of thing. But I think most people, if they did overheat their car, they wouldn't wait five hours for somebody in advance to come and help them. They'd roll over, they'd let it cool down, they'd get the radiator cap off, they'd see what was going on. And I think even yeah, even your basic motorist wouldn't have that same sense of helplessness when they broke down in the olden days.

SPEAKER_00 18:56

No, indeed not. And I was looking at my latest car, I went I was driving it for a couple of weeks, so it's not new, it's about eight years old. And and the ad blue light came on. Ad blue. I had to put ad blue at the the land drive. I mean, what is that? Apparently it's pig's whee, isn't it, or something?

SPEAKER_01 19:10

Is it? I'm gonna have to Google it.

SPEAKER_00 19:12

Yeah, and the cap I had to get off and I needed the tool, but the tool was in the boot, and I had to go through the manual, it took me twenty minutes. I know now. And then I realized during this process, because I'd never bothered checking, it hasn't got a spare wheel. It's got one of those uh repair kits, effectively, which is can consists of a compressor that you plug into the cigarette Yeah, and a tire and a great big bottle of tire wheel. Well, if you'd seen some of the blowouts we've had over the year uh th there's no way you uh so it hasn't got a spare. I'm confounded by that. But you know what? You can keep them all, but you're right.

SPEAKER_01 19:49

Just to carry on with the old Lady Rams, so you don't have a spare and you're on a motorway that's a smart motorway, you also don't have a hard shoulder.

SPEAKER_00 19:56

No, that's right. Do you know what? To my shame, I ran out of petrol in we put an old Volvo estate which doesn't refuse it just refuses to die. And we have it as a backup car, and I used it the other day to tow my race car down to where we fix it. And I was coming back with the M23 and I never saw the fuel light come on. So I ran out of petrol on the F twenty five and you're right, there's nowhere to pull over. I managed to coast into the emergency stop thing that they have every mile or so, the orange bit of tarma. And I managed to ring the breakdown people and they bought a can of fuel which I paid a lot of money for, which is fine, I don't have any problem with that, it's my own stupid fault. Then the uh highway patrol people that aren't really the police, because they don't get as much money, but they do the same job. So they pulled over and they said, You can't rejoin the motorway until we close it. I said, You what? And they closed two lanes of the motorway and caused carnage and I felt so bad because how many times have you been so I said, No, it's fine. I've just put no you can't. If you pull out, we will prosecute you. I thought there's nothing coming. There was nothing there.

SPEAKER_01 21:06

It's just madness. Do you yeah, do you ever miss the days where you just had to trudge along the hard shoulder till you found a little orange phone box and someone would come out with a jerry can? Or even worse, you had to walk off the slit road with your jerry can and go find the petrol station.

SPEAKER_00 21:20

Yeah. I know.

SPEAKER_01 21:22

Um so I'm I'm really interested in your actual car history. I know you were lucky enough to do the London Sprite and your dad had the Edwardian cars, but what was your first car?

SPEAKER_00 21:30

My very first car was a Triumph Donnemite. But before that was when I was 17 and actually had the driving license. But before that, I'd actually had a split screen Morris Minor, which I'd restored a nost a standard eight, I remember those. 1952 or three, I think that was. That was beautiful, that was a time walk thing.

SPEAKER_01 21:49

That'd be similar to the splitty, then won't it? Early fifties.

SPEAKER_00 21:52

Yeah, it would be, yeah, that was fifty three. Yeah. That had and then I remember the registration number, which was TPP five, and the whole point that we get. I think it MOT was so that I could actually sell the registration number which I've got. With the register off. Yeah, which it happens all the time. Or did that. There's nothing worth having now that's there's they've all gone, haven't they? So yes, we which I did, and then I sold the car on. That registration number I see from time to time and it's on an old it's on a rolls. So it's still knocking around TPP5. And the standard eight, I again, I rebuilt the engine, half the engine had gone, I think, and I put that back together. So it's because my dad was in the car business, that we had the workshop and I could use that to do stuff. So I learned to I learnt to to repair cars and motor b motorbikes and winter bikes as well.

SPEAKER_01 22:39

So how'd you get to the racing?

SPEAKER_00 22:42

The racing, I started cart racing at a reasonably young age, and and then I moved into gearbox carts, which always fascinated me more because the problem is, Sam, I'm built like a rugby player, not a racing driver. So it was always about a pound to weight. And and I was never going to win anything in a hundred national, which was the class then, because I weighed too I was supposed to play rugby as well, so it was 14.5 stone and and racing against five stone kids that that were five-stone stokeing work, frankly, and they were always going to be quicker than me. The gearbox carts became more interesting to me, and I raced to 250 National and 250 Formula E, it was called at the time, which 250 International, which were back in the day quicker than Formula One. They were super fast and they still are.

SPEAKER_01 23:44

What's a little moment?

SPEAKER_00 23:45

It was a round of the French Hill Climb Championships. And my car was super quick. They are fast, the thirties Riley's they're very well developed, and they're a twin cam engine as well, so they they were way in front of their time. And we adjusted the brake bias slightly. And he the only thing was I never checked it, and it was adjusted to the back instead of the front, so it was all the wrong way. And it was just literally you just turned a you just altered the cam. Anyway, it was I hit the first bend and it was a left hand bend, straight on was a barrier behind which was a great big drop to the cli down the cliffs where the sea is washing against the rocks. It's that kind of proper scene, if you can imagine.

SPEAKER_01 24:26

And that was a terrifying bend on a hill climb like that going off to the right.

SPEAKER_00 24:31

And then you went on up and but the you can tell where the Etritac hill climb is because the road is in such good condition. Obviously in France they close the roads for what they call course, I don't think but they don't they know they're not gonna do that here. But it's beautifully smooth, so it's prepped like a race circuit would be. And I think we used to go up the hill in about 42 seconds or something like that. And I remember driving up it in a road car thinking, how on earth did I go up this in 42 seconds? But uh anyway, I hit the bench, hit the brakes, and locked the back up. I actually heard the because it was quite a lot of people watching, and that my car was incredibly loud, it made the ground vibrate, it was that loud. And I remember even over that and the noise of the engine hearing the crowd go and collected gas. Yes, I collected gas. And I just had to counterintuitively put some power on to get round the bend, at which point I just slowed down, and uh we have that adrenaline shock and you're just shaking. And to be honest, that was my last little moment in the ride. I thought that was probably a sign that I shouldn't ever drive one of these again. But I've obviously got a a short memory because I've just bought a 12-4 special which I haven't picked up yet, and I'll be racing that a silver stone on the eleventh of April.

SPEAKER_01 25:44

Are you gonna hill climb it?

SPEAKER_00 25:45

I will hill climb that, yeah. Yeah. With a BSC stuff.

SPEAKER_01 25:49

And you're at Shellsley.

SPEAKER_00 25:50

I will be. This if it all works out, then yeah, should be this year. Yeah, should be there this year. I haven't I haven't hill climbed or raced anything like that since then, and that's twenty-five years ago, I think. So we're gonna sell a bit of silver stone on the eleventh of April, and then on the twenty fifth, twenty-sixth we're racing the Lola at Yeah, I'm fascinated by the Lola.

SPEAKER_01 26:09

How did that come about?

SPEAKER_00 26:11

A friend of mine is Robin Lackford, Robin's very well known in historic motorsport circles, and this car was built by son Nigel over lockdown for his dad. But Robin couldn't fit in it. He just it it just didn't fit it him. It's like an ergonomic thing. And you couldn't move the pedal box. It just wasn't possible, that's how it was. So after all that work, it turned out that it it couldn't be moved. It was it's chassis number two, they built eight, I think, or was it eleven? I'm not sure now. Um So there will be somebody that will correct you because that's what happens. But it's one of the early I think it's chassis number two that I have. It's a 77 car. And so it's eligible for class B, which suits me because not being funny, I'm I was 61 last week, so there's no way I'm gonna keep up with the 25-year-olds who haven't learnt that if you come off it hurts.

SPEAKER_01 27:03

With age comes the wisdom of not wanting to end up in A and E.

SPEAKER_00 27:07

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. There's a bit of something happens in there, doesn't it? Something flexible. But the cars are quick, as the cornering speeds are high, the down forces are there, you're running on aero and uh I've never driven one, but I know someone who has and he said that they are wonderfully balanced.

SPEAKER_01 27:21

The reason he loved a Lola was just he felt that they were one of the most balanced cars he'd raced.

SPEAKER_00 27:26

Yes, certainly. I think one of the things I had to get used to is just how well it turned in. So if you and you have to have a bit of confidence in that because it's if you're not going fast enough, then the brakes aren't up to temperature, the tires aren't working, the aero's not working. So you have to find that place where it you can get everything in that perfect sort of So we're back to the bravery gene again then, aren't we?

SPEAKER_01 27:50

I think you have to have a certain amount of bottle to know that you have to go faster to be safer.

SPEAKER_00 27:55

The stupidity gene, yes, that's right. I it is counterintuitive sometimes. But I think most race circuits, if you look at them, I I don't think everyone appreciates this unless you're a race but unless you're a driver. Turn one is always a fast corner normally, because y if you're coming off the grid and you're going into turn one, it it's never going to be a hairpin or something that you're going to bunch everybody up because you're going to get collisions. So Yeah, so if you're racing, say the national circuit at Silverstone Copse is your first corner. We take that flat out in the lower. That's quite a speed.

SPEAKER_01 28:32

Which is your favourite circuit for historic racing?

SPEAKER_00 28:36

Oh, do you know, spa probably, but if you had to say UK, I really like Cabwell Park. And I also like Castle Coombs. Castle Coombs are a very fast circuit. There's it's basically a square, isn't it? Unless they shoved a couple of um chicanes in. Fancy bits. Fancy bits, yeah, to slow really down. But I love Coombe, but I really like Cadwell Park, I think. It's like the mini Nurbergering, and it's a long drive. It's always a bit of an expedition to get there, because y y you think you're nearly there, and it seems like it's another three hours to go. But once you're there, it's it's a beautifully quiet, peaceful place. And in Lincolnshire, which is very flat, isn't it? And then you get to Cadwell, and a meteorite must have hit it or something, because it's very hilly. And uh the first bend I think is Charlie's, it's a left-hand or off the start-finish line. If you and again, it's getting that corner right, so that's a left-hand bend. I always used as a marshalls post just on the right. I turn in there and I just keep my foot foot in. And and if you can learn to do that, which is the secret with Slicks and Wings powers, if as long as you've got a car that would do it, obviously, that's the other thing. Yeah. Then that sets you up and that just builds that momentum and carries you speed through.

SPEAKER_01 29:44

You've got to have a great deal of faith, you've got to have a relationship with a car to know exactly what you can do with it on the track. Just for context, what sort of speeds should you get up to on a straight?

SPEAKER_00 29:54

It depends on the circuit again, because you're gearing like the circuit, you're changing it's a human gearbox, you change all the ratios up. It's a it's basically historic Formula Ford 2000, so they're not terribly quick, but you're probably looking at about 145, 140 miles an hour, I think, something like that. I don't really think about it too much, to be honest.

SPEAKER_01 30:12

That's blistering speed in a 71 loader, I think, to be honest.

SPEAKER_00 30:18

I don't think you really think about it too much. We don't have speedos, we have a rev counter. And sometimes you go through the speed trap. I think the speed trap at Snetson we're we're hitting about 127, so something like that. So that's not quite so fast. But yeah, it depends on the circuit a little bit.

SPEAKER_01 30:33

Are you coming at Front Pop for the Gold Cup?

SPEAKER_00 30:35

Well, I am doing the Gold Cup this year. Yeah, we're doing a lot of racing this year. My son's racing this year, he's racing with the owners club, he's racing this Sunday at Donnington. I should have been racing MGB this Sunday with him on the same grid, but not in the same class, crucially.

SPEAKER_01 30:51

Because I think that that could be Does it get competitive round the dinner table with you both racing?

SPEAKER_00 30:55

Well, yeah, it would do, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 30:58

Who's the better driver?

SPEAKER_00 30:59

The what do they say? Youth and enthusiasm is no substitute for age and cunning.

SPEAKER_01 31:06

No, not at all.

SPEAKER_00 31:08

So that's my opinion. But he's he's on a journey with motorsport, which is great. And it's a lovely family as well, because everyone looks out. Uh it's generally friendly, I think, that's the thing. Historic motorsport. Not like some of the other stuff, to be fair, where nobody's going to help you. I rem I remember us racing in Austin Heidi Sprite with the midget the the midget and sprites club and something wouldn't happen before the race I couldn't it wouldn't start. And everybody got out their cars. And we're on our way to part for to the assembly area. And everyone's getting out of the car saying, Tim's car's not working, we're gonna go.

SPEAKER_01 31:44

That it's fabulous, isn't it?

SPEAKER_00 31:46

Absolutely.

unknown 31:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 31:47

It wouldn't be But even if if I've done it and broke it down on a main roundabout in a silver shadow, the amount of people that stop to help not in classic cars, but that have a classic car in the garage, stopping in their modern cars to think, Oh, that there's one of ours broken down at the side of the road. The amount of people that I could break down in my modern car and nobody would blink. But the m when you are ever, if you're ever at the side of the road with a bonnet up in a classic car, it's it's surprising and wonderful how many people will pull over and say, You alright, actually need a hand.

SPEAKER_00 32:17

Definitely. Actually, I'll tell you a story about that. That's just reminded me of something. So years ago I did a rally in my air about a 1914 sunbeam. The sunbeam used to be um a staff core, the Royal Flying Corps, my sunbeam. It's lovely, old thing. Lovely. It's never been restored in terms of the leather, the paintwork, it's all the same, it's as original. Mechanically, it's in very good condition, but the we've rebuilt the engine a couple of times, but these original interior must be wonderful, then. Oh, it's just lovely. It just is if you like an old car to look like an old car, then this is exactly.

SPEAKER_01 32:49

I have a real issue, even with 70s cars, where I like the uh they're only original once. I love Tatty Original. I'd much rather see Tatty Original, and sometimes you see interiors and they're so you can have they can be nicely connolised and they can be over-connolised, but either way, I love a rugged interior, a rugged original interior. I don't think uh once you've changed it, it's gone. It's only original ones.

SPEAKER_00 33:10

Yeah, it's only original once, yeah, exactly. So we're on this rally, and it was actually in a place called Peron, which is in the Somme Valley. First of all, when we when I drove there, we got there and there's this French guy, is it and they were using a citron dealership with a hotel next to it and a petrol station. Is that like the rally base? And it was with the Tufte Club, which is the French automobile club. And the reason it's called the Tuftef Club, it's for the veterans, it's like the veteran car club of France, is because of the the noise they make, Tuft Tuf going along. So that uh that obviously it's lovely. But so we're in we get to this uh citron garage and this guy the we're all gonna park and this guy says, Oh yes, I can't do the French accent, but he said, Where's your trailer? I said, No, we haven't got a trailer, we're just in the car. He said, Yes, but how did he get here? I said, in the car. He said He said, But where have you come from? I said, England. He said, Yes, but not in the car. I said, Yes. He couldn't get his head around the fact that we'd driven from England to the ferry at New Haven, driven to Deer, driven across France.

SPEAKER_01 34:11

It's all part of the adventure. It's all part of the adventure.

SPEAKER_00 34:14

I've driven that car all over Europe, done thousands of miles on it, never missed a beat. Fantastic.

SPEAKER_01 34:19

Do you think it doesn't miss a beat because you drive it? If that was in a museum in a shed, you wouldn't pull it out and take it to France, it's because you drive it.

SPEAKER_00 34:27

It would break straight away, wouldn't it? Yeah. But we we talked so there's this we were I was going round the route with and we stopped and there was this car that had broken down, and it was the president's car, the of the Tuff Tuff Club. It was actually his son who was driving it. And and it I think it was a panard, something like that. And the there was a brake rod, it was a the it was a rod that operated the brakes. Just an and it had broken. So I thought, oh my goodness, how are we gonna fix that? And from nowhere, and we're in the middle of the French countryside, this Frenchman comes out and says, Oh, he said, Come give me. So I took the brake rod off and we went into his barn, and it's very rural there, and he had every tool you could imagine in this workshop, absolutely incredible. So what I did was I threaded each end of the bar, then put a nut on the bar to like hold it together. Then I welded round each nut so it wouldn't come off.

SPEAKER_01 35:20

And we put He had welding equipment and everything.

SPEAKER_00 35:23

Everything, yeah. Literally everything. And uh so we popped it back in it. He's I remember the guy's name was Christoph. And if Christoph, if you're listening to this, I hope you fix this now because you'll see where I'm going with this. So I put the rod back on, the car, and off we go. That was it. So we fixed it. But we were faster than most of the other cars on the route anyway. So it didn't delay it. It was fine. It was lovely to help out. About ten years later, and it was a good ten years later, I'm on the London to Brighton run, and I see Christoph with the car. I said, Oh, Christoph, how you remembered who I was? I said, and I looked down. He hadn't fixed it.

SPEAKER_01 35:57

It had your roadside repair. Yeah, yeah. Not broken.

SPEAKER_00 36:02

I'll tell you what, if he knew what my welding was like, he wouldn't trust that.

SPEAKER_01 36:06

And I bet he trailed it over as well, hadn't he?

SPEAKER_00 36:08

He probably did, yeah. Yeah, no, he'd have trailered it over. It's still the same repair. I said, You need to fix that.

SPEAKER_01 36:14

Temporary repair means temporary repair.

SPEAKER_00 36:18

Still driving.

SPEAKER_01 36:19

So tell me a little bit about what you're doing now then, Tim, because I obviously see you all over my Facebook page. I'm a big fan of what you do with your classic cars now. How did you get into what you're doing now?

SPEAKER_00 36:29

I was a proper developer and in 2020 I came out of my last development and I'd had enough of all the red tape, actually. And yeah, it was we built 44 flats in the centre of Ipswich and it was just horrendous. It got it's just got worse and worse over the years. Anyway. Fed up with all of that, I came out my last development in eight March 2020, a few days before lockdown. In fact, I did trials as well with the VSCC when my car's working, and we'd just done the I think it was the John no, it was the Hereford trial. And I came back, drove through Cheltenham, which of course was the Cheltenham Festival was on at the time, and this was just before Boris Johnson sh shut down the country. And I I got out of my last development. I got I said to the people I was working with, buy me out, I've had enough. And I got my money back on the 12th of March, which is correct coincidentally also my birthday. Then I think lockdown was the 18th, was it? I don't know, something like that, six years later. It wasn't long, less than a week or ten days. And all of a sudden we're not allowed out at the house. And there's me stuck in the house with me and my dog at the time. And I'm climbing the walls. I've been involved in vehicle hire in the eighties with a company called Target Car and Van Hire. I don't know whether you've ever heard of them, but it was something I was involved with. And I so I had a bit of experience with vehicle rental and classic cars, and I bolted the two together and came up with vintage and classic car hire, which we still do. And then out of that grew the prize drawer side. And funnily enough, I was going to do the prize drawer side, instead we did the car hire. It was 50-50, I was weighing up which, and then the other one came. So we would have been the first people to do it with classic cars, but it turned out that we were not the first. But we were one of the early ones. And there's yes, and another one now that does classic cars.

SPEAKER_01 38:18

So on the the higher side, what have you got in the fleet? What have you got in the fleet?

SPEAKER_00 38:22

We've got a couple of MG midgets and a couple of MGBs and some more and a Morgan. A couple of Morgans, actually. Yeah, so that's what we're starting off with.

SPEAKER_01 38:30

And what would something like that set you back for the weekend?

SPEAKER_00 38:33

I think you got me on the hot. I think it's about 300 quid a day for the Morgan, which is the top one. And I think and our base loan is 99 pounds a day, which is an MG. So it should be affordable, you can have a picnic, you can and we're actually franchising it as well. So that was always the plan. So there's a centralised booking system which which does all the legwork, so nobody has to do all the paperwork, it's all automated, it's all using AI actually, it's really clever. And then so the idea would be if somebody bought a franchise from us that we would supply all the cars. They don't buy the cars, we supply the cars. They just manage them and run them and and get it and take the money. So that's it.

SPEAKER_01 39:12

I I get asked regularly, because obviously I've got cars advertised for sale, whether I would hire them out for it's normally a prom or a wedding.

SPEAKER_02 39:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 39:21

I do the American stuff as well, so it is quite unusual. And I don't think there are many people in my part of the world that actually will do that self-drive hire. Normally it's you can hire a car, but the owner will be driving it or the company that owns it will be chauffeuring it. But I don't think there's many where you can actually self-drive.

SPEAKER_00 39:40

There isn't. There isn't, no, there isn't. We get asked a lot for weddings and uh and there's some film work as well. I've got a couple of interesting sort of social history. I've got a 1965 London taxi, which I absolutely love. It doesn't get used enough, really, it's a shame. But it's uh it's got all the advertising in the back on the back of the seats, it's got the original meter, the original taxi.

SPEAKER_01 40:00

That should be earning its that should be earning its keep with TV work, really.

SPEAKER_00 40:03

It should do. Actually, somebody needs to buy that off me and go and do that. So if anyone's listening, they want a really lovely beardmore taxi that's cost me 20 grand to rebuild, which was a labour of love. There's a whole reason for that. Deliver with my own.

SPEAKER_01 40:14

I know someone that collapses classic taxis, so as an aside, he goes, he's got a couple, he actually takes them down to to London for the D-Day celebrations and does all the reenactments and that kind of thing. So if you send me the info, I'll forward it off.

SPEAKER_00 40:28

I will, yeah, I'll send it, it's a lovely thing. So Beardmore only made about a 700 and it's the one with the luggage cut away at the front, opposite the driver. It's a real it's got a lot of uh character, let's say. I think it's got a Ford Zephyr engine or something like that.

SPEAKER_01 40:41

Oh it's not gonna let you down then. No, it's brilliant, just starts So the raffle business, I the raffle business fascinates me because it I think it's something that I know you were one of the first, but quite a lot of people are either doing it or other classic car businesses are diversifying into it and running it alongside other areas of business. How have you find the uptake's been? Do you think it's is has it grown exponentially over the past few years or is it something that's still to to really go mass market, do you think?

SPEAKER_00 41:10

We're in our fifth year with that. So the fourth anniversary of our first draw was the 29th of November 2020, just gone. If I had to do it again, would I know? I've built three world-class businesses in my business career, and this has been like this is the fourth thing I've done, and it's been the hardest thing I've ever done. What it's i it looks on paper to be a lovely light touch, easy thing to do. It is really tough. If I tell you that our Facebook advertising spend this year alone is£750,000.

SPEAKER_01 41:42

Yeah, I believe you.

SPEAKER_00 41:44

And and the people that are getting rich out of my business is Mark Zuckerberg, I think. It's not so much that it's not going okay now, because it is, it's he's making money now, but it took five years. And I think because we were in in at the beginning, if you were to do it now, you would really need deep pockets.

SPEAKER_01 42:05

So can I ask you a question? Because I know that we they pop up all the time, like you say, they're that you can't go anywhere on Facebook with a classic car presence and you not have them coming up. Do you find that the volume market is for a$9.99 ticket for a practical usable classic like a triumph stag? Or do you think the kind of£50 ticket for the supercars, because you always obviously we all get our little calculators out and think, oh, we can do the maths on that with no regard for the operating heads of business, I know. But do you know, do you think that people at five and ten pounds there's a bigger market for people that will take a punt, or do you think that those cars have got a diminishing attraction?

SPEAKER_00 42:40

I think the way we've settled onto this now is that we've got a database which is very much about sixty British sports cars, and they're ones that people can see them being able to afford and run and maintain. We don't get people selling them, they win them, they love them, we get feedback all the time, and w what we're doing is we're enabling somebody to have something really special where they might not have been able to afford to have that. There was an MGB went, in fact, we delivered it last week to I saw that.

SPEAKER_02 43:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 43:09

Jesus, sweetie. And she absolutely she was jumping up and down. She is so happy. And actually she uh had a VW polo that blew up three weeks before. She bought one ticket and won a car. How fabulous is that. And that is what it's about for me.

SPEAKER_01 43:24

If I'm I think a lot of people that win cars like the sixties British Classics, they uh they fall very much into pride and joy territory, don't they? And they're the ones that are going to be at the pub every other Thursday at the classic car meet. They're gonna get used for picnics and they're gonna be uh cherished as a second car. I think that by the fifty, sixty pound supercar tickets, it's just it's a lottery win, isn't it?

SPEAKER_00 43:48

Yeah, it is. And and normally with the big companies like Seven Days and I think some others that do those Lamborghinis and the Ferrari whatever. I don't know what they are. I'm not I have a Ferrari actually, that's me. I've got 308 and everything. But really, they just want the cash prize, I think a lot of the time.

SPEAKER_01 44:06

That's I mean it's like a lottery win, isn't it?

SPEAKER_00 44:08

For the quarter million quid or the car, so they'll take the quarter million quid. We don't do a cash alternative, so you win the car, that's it. And that the people that we have on our database are proper enthusiasts. And we've built a community. We really have.

SPEAKER_01 44:25

And have you built that on social media? Do you think that's largely been led by Facebook?

SPEAKER_00 44:30

Yes, it has, and that's the only way you can build it, I think. We have done things like car shows and things, but actually that's quite low volume. It's really the people that have engaged with our adverts and seen us and started. I think it's like water dripping on marble, isn't it? Because in the beginning, this wasn't a format which was widely known. So we'd get people posting you have the trolls when they go scam and they just price uh for a hundred lines of just writing scam and posting that, or they think or they'll write something very clever that they think this is a scam. It we're not, we're genuine. I think over time we've been around long enough that people we don't get that anymore.

SPEAKER_01 45:10

I think longevity negates that that question mark over whether or not it's a scam. Does it so where do you find your cars?

SPEAKER_00 45:16

We've got a really good network of some really decent, genuine people. We're not talking boise here. Although I think those days Nothing wrong with that. Nothing wrong with that. Yeah. So there's no sawdust in algae differentials or uh eggs in the radiators. I think it's really important. I know this sounds like I'm holier than now, but integrity is what it's all about.

SPEAKER_01 45:39

And no, I listen, I couldn't agree more. As a second generation car dealer, it's what you trade on repeat business and reputation, so integrity's got to be at the forefront of your mind all the time.

SPEAKER_00 45:49

Um we are lucky to have some fantastic contacts and we find these cars, and I think we've hit a bit of a seam at the moment of absolute gold standard stuff. We're launching an MGBGT which has had a complete bare metal from the ground up, every nut and bolt rebuild. It's got a an Iversell two-litre unleaded engine, it's got factory power steering servo disc brakes with ventilation discs and it's wire wheels in iris blue with cream leather. And if you wanted to build that car, I don't know what it would cost.

SPEAKER_01 46:25

The the problem is with cars that they're becoming so rare in that condition because it's just not financially viable to do the work anymore. Cars like that are few and far between. So do you get offered them?

unknown 46:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 46:35

Do you get people to approach you or do you have to work really hard day out to find them?

SPEAKER_00 46:39

We do get people offered them to us and generally it is an expectation sometimes, I'm not saying in all cases, sometimes that people have done the sums and think we make all this money and will say, can we do a joint venture or do this and do that? And we won't do that because we need to manage their expectations. And if they saw what it costs us to do, to run, they wouldn't do it. No. We have contacts in the old car world that will know of cars that come up. Sometimes they're when people have passed away and it's their pride and joy. So we're doing there's an MGB V8 that we've got at the moment, it's a factory car that is absolutely gorgeous. And it was someone's pride and joy for 25 years and sadly it passed away. But it came through a contact and we pay proper money. This is the thing, if you do that, you always get the repeat.

SPEAKER_01 47:30

If you are a quick and easy deal, you're the first one they phone.

SPEAKER_00 47:33

It's just simple artists. And and they know what we expect. The stag that we drew last week is like immaculate.

SPEAKER_01 47:40

It's yeah, beautiful. I was looking at that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 47:43

And that's the thing, it's all about quality, and that leads on to the integrity, and then obviously we we find the cars and we're doing about four a month now, I think.

SPEAKER_01 47:52

How would you find you on Facebook?

SPEAKER_00 47:53

It's vintage and classic car competitions, I think. That was a good question. I'm a bit of a dinosaur. I do the operational side, I've got a marketer.

SPEAKER_01 48:02

What's in your fleet at the moment then before we go to?

SPEAKER_00 48:05

Well, my own cars.

SPEAKER_01 48:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 48:07

Oh, crumbs, shall I say? So we the earliest ones, I know 400, which is which was my mum's car, and she drove that all over the place.

SPEAKER_01 48:15

So that's that your London to Brighton car?

SPEAKER_00 48:17

Yeah, it's a London to Brighton car. She's called Annabelle. And we always put some stuff out on social media around the Brighton run, and that gets loads of views. In fact, there's still one of me starting Annabelle that went viral on its own. There was no pushing on that just went. So Annabelle is R04, and that's a Humberette. Then in order, let me think, let's try and do it in age order. So we've got a 1914 sunbeam, which I mentioned already. We have a 1923 Rolls-Royce 20 horsepower. That was an interesting car. That came from a chap a doctor in Vanessa. She lived on Culludon Moor, where the battle was. And uh he's a lovely chap. And he was actually one of our winners of a car. He won a he won a try and Spitfire. And uh he said, I've got this, are you interested in this car? So I thought, oh, you know what? It was a it's a doctor's coupe, the Dicky Seat. And what happened was when my mum passed a driving test, her father, my grandfather, said, if you pass your driving test, I'll buy you a car. So she if you first time. So she passed first time and he bought her a Morris 8, which she promptly went out and swapped for a Rolls-Royce 20 horsepower with a Dicky seat.

SPEAKER_01 49:27

So she's been a character from the off then, hasn't she?

SPEAKER_00 49:29

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 49:29

I've got them right next to you, mate. I've got the twenty twenty-five horsepower box and it tells you by chassis number who the first owner was.

SPEAKER_00 49:38

Oh yes. Okay, that's the twenty twenty-five. Mine's a twenty.

SPEAKER_01 49:42

Yes, twenty, twenty and twenty-five.

SPEAKER_00 49:44

Oh, is that okay, yeah. I'll have to get you the chassis number. I've got that book actually.

SPEAKER_01 49:49

Yeah, but that just I happen to have it next to me then, but yeah, I think the I'm slightly obsessed with the history of cars and number plates as well. I love going back and seeing what cars the plates have been on in the past and who owned them. And I love obviously in the time before data protection, where you could actually publish a book with the registration number, the name and address of the owner, and the car it was owned.

SPEAKER_00 50:12

I know, but they used to produce a members list for the clubs as well, didn't they? And I suppose if anyone got hold of that now, it's can you imagine? Yeah. Anyway, the 20 we've got we bought, but the yeah, ironically, in that book, the 20 horsepower book, the time the book that was written was in the I think it was the late 60s or early 70s, and the current owner, because it tells you the original, and the current owner at the time was a Mr. Barry Grant. He was one of my dad's friends. So the car that I got from Inverness was in Essex in 1972, because the guy lived round the corner from us. So he's come home. But the funny thing was he was called he was Dr. David Farkerson. He won't mind me cut in the say. I was still in touch with him, he's a lovely chap. And his wife's called Daphne Farkerson. What a lovely name. Yeson. So the car is called Daphne. That's it. Positive. And she's a very elegant old lady. And so we've got the twenty-three rolls.

SPEAKER_01 51:08

Do you run it regularly? Yeah, in fact.

SPEAKER_00 51:10

We just got it out this morning. It's a lovely sunny day here. And I except that I'm in my Morgan today, that's my summer time car. So it's come out the Morgan. That's a 69 Morgan 44. And there's a story about that as well, because that was owned by one lady for 60 years who and it's her daily driver. It's the only car she ever owned. And then the family, I say 60 years, we something like that, 50 years. And then when she passed away, the family had it restored at vast amounts of money. I think it was a 30 grand restoration. And then nobody drove it, so nobody used it, and they decided to sell it. And I bought it, and that was again a contact.

SPEAKER_01 51:49

Your daily now.

SPEAKER_00 51:51

It's a lovely car, yeah. So it's a it's got a Ford Crossflow engine, which doesn't sound terribly exciting, but it's been bought out to 1750 and it's got a load of engine mods. Goes well, but it's more it's just the driver's car. It's got a five-speed type nine gearbox, so it's a bit more practical.

SPEAKER_01 52:09

Got a concentrate?

SPEAKER_00 52:10

Yeah. Oh yeah, it's quite a tricky car because it's obviously no driver aids and you hit a toll, you might end up in the ditch.

SPEAKER_01 52:16

But that's part the that's part of the joy of it though, isn't it?

SPEAKER_00 52:20

Yeah, exactly. So that's the morgan. Anyway, I'm going back. So we've got a Bull Nose Morris trials car, which is uh I think the most fun on four wheels, really. Except Have you hill climbed that? Yeah, the yeah, the uh uh with the The Bull Nose. Off-road hill climbing, yeah. You see the winter trials. Yes, I have. We were doing really well in the X-More trial, which was the last one it went out on, and the clutch went. Oh no, then we took it somewhere else, so the engine, the bottom end of the engine gone. I'm on my third engine rebuild, my third clutch. It's just always in bits.

SPEAKER_01 52:51

It wants a rest.

SPEAKER_00 52:54

Yeah, but it's fun. But what we will get it out, and every time because it they come around like now, the trial's just finishing, and then they're in the autumn, and I always seem to miss that window, and and it's sat at the back of the workshop. So I will do it for the autumn and we'll go out and do the uh the trials in the autumn. But yeah, so there's uh I don't know what else we've got.

SPEAKER_01 53:12

308?

SPEAKER_00 53:13

308 Ferrari, yeah. That's uh that was uh an impulse buy, really. But it's one of one of only 42 right-hand drive GTBIs, and it's only done 26,000 miles, and I've got every single Wow, okay. We had it repainted professionally at a eye-watering amount of money.

SPEAKER_01 53:33

I can imagine it.

SPEAKER_00 53:34

And I'm going to sell that if anyone wants the best car that there is. It's that.

SPEAKER_01 53:39

Is it for sale?

SPEAKER_00 53:40

Yes, for sale.

SPEAKER_01 53:41

You send me will you send me the details afterwards and I'll post it up as well with car in there.

SPEAKER_00 53:45

Yeah, we've got some details in the Ferrari, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 53:47

Uh how much are you asking for it?

SPEAKER_00 53:49

I don't know. I'd like about ninety for it, which is cheap really for what it is. But I would take this probably, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 53:55

Running service, belted, ready to go.

SPEAKER_00 53:58

Yeah, it's ready to go, yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 54:00

Yeah, yeah, but I'll post that up.

SPEAKER_00 54:01

Although it's one of those things that's more like a bottle of fine whiskey that you don't really want to drive, which is why it's that one good bottle of wine that you don't want to open, isn't it?

SPEAKER_01 54:10

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 54:11

It really is. And it's it and that's the thing, it's tricky, but yeah, it's a nice car. It's all on the buttons drives. But I don't know what else we've got. The Morgan I mentioned. We've got the race cars, we've got a couple of NGB race cars.

SPEAKER_01 54:23

I think that's enough. The Lola.

SPEAKER_00 54:25

The Lola, yeah. They love the Lola. Lola, is that the song, isn't it? The Kinks. Yeah. I always think it's funny 'cause it walks like a woman, talks like a man, and I think that one line about the Lola sums that car up really.

SPEAKER_01 54:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 54:38

And we've got the Rhymes 204 coming next week as well. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 54:42

So you got enough on your plate with the old cars then?

SPEAKER_00 54:44

It's fancy, yeah. There's more I've got a an S-type Jag as well. I forgot about that.

SPEAKER_01 54:48

They're lovely usable things, aren't they?

SPEAKER_00 54:50

Yeah, that's the 3.8 manual with overdrive, which is the the one to have.

SPEAKER_01 54:54

Yeah. I was out in a a Riley Pathfinder, a 56 Pathfinder last week, and I must say the one thing that was missing was overdrive.

SPEAKER_02 55:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 55:02

Yeah, it makes you realise how things like the Jags and even the Bristols, that overdrive makes such a difference. It makes them it must have made them so much more usable at that time.

SPEAKER_00 55:13

Yes, and I think on a long journey now, our roads are like that, aren't they? They're dual carriageway or the motorway. And I mean I'd I've taken the Morgan on the motorway and it's got five speeds because it's been rebuilt with a extra five, extra fifty. But it didn't have. And I think it those lorries are awfully big when you're on the in that sort of little tiny car. And I know it has a seatbelt, but that's almost going to you're almost better not to have one, really.

unknown 55:41

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 55:42

Do you know that's exactly what w we were talking about was that there's some cars where you're better off getting thrown clear.

unknown 55:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 55:48

Being strapped into the car, yeah, which I know sounds counterintuitive in terms of today's health and safety standards, but no, I completely get that. And again, I'll go back to this thing of if there is no hard shoulder and you've got a wagon there and a barrier there, you've got nowhere to go, have you?

SPEAKER_00 56:05

No, they're not smart motorways, are they? They're extremely stupid, really.

SPEAKER_01 56:09

For me, I find them I find I yeah, I find them quite unsafe and quite a worry, especially because I do drive I drive old cars. It is a bit of a worry. So what's next, Tim? You've got more ruffles coming up on the vintage and classic.

SPEAKER_00 56:20

More ruffles coming up. We've got some amazing cars coming up. There's an Austin Healy 3000, a UK matching numbers one.

SPEAKER_01 56:27

I'll buy a ticket too for that one.

SPEAKER_00 56:29

Yeah, that's black over red.

SPEAKER_01 56:31

Lovely.

SPEAKER_00 56:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 56:32

That's my favourite colour combination.

SPEAKER_00 56:34

Yeah, it's absolutely gorgeous. So that's coming up. There's some other stuff. So we're going to try and do a really s nice car, one a month, a bit bit more expensive. The thing at the moment with the way the economy is, I think that it does affect everybody. And we are mindful of the fact that when we're offering cars as prizes, they're ones that people want to be able to look after and maintain. So if we offered a Lamborghini Even if we offered something like a my 308, people would be scared of it.

SPEAKER_01 57:05

Look, I've been to be honest with you, I find cars like that to me a worry and honestly a bit of an albatross. I would rather have an MGC that I can jump in, go big raw, bit of understair, but we can live with that, can't we? But I would rather have a 60s British practical usable classic than the 308, not for financial reasons.

SPEAKER_00 57:23

I I get you, and and I'm with you on that all the way.

SPEAKER_01 57:26

Because I do use them. I want something. Oh, the sun's shining, let's take that out.

SPEAKER_00 57:30

Exactly, yeah. And all the cars that we offer will I I feel obviously we can't offer a warranty or anything because they are what they are. However, we do go through them, they go through our workshops thoroughly. We don't just have a quick look.

SPEAKER_01 57:48

I've seen the standard of the cars that you have as well, and they are top level.

SPEAKER_00 57:52

Yeah. And then we are giving somebody a prize that they could go and do a European road trip or just take it down the pump. It doesn't matter, does it?

SPEAKER_01 58:01

But it's a pride and joy car, isn't it?

SPEAKER_00 58:03

But yeah.

SPEAKER_01 58:04

I get that completely. So if you don't mind, I might come and see you at Open Park then if you're at the Goldman. I'd love to come and see you.

SPEAKER_00 58:10

If I if anyone's listening, the most always happy to have visitors. And uh we're racing with the HSCC this year and the VSCC and the MG Owners Club.

SPEAKER_01 58:21

Can I come for a sneaky behind the scenes peak in the pit lanes as well? Can I come and Tim? Thank you so much for your time this afternoon. It's been an absolute pleasure. You heard it here first. Tim has promised me a proper behind the scenes peek in the pit lane. And even better, we're going to record part two of this podcast from the pit lane at the Alton Park Gold Cup. I can't wait. So to find Tim, check out the Classic Cars live now and coming up in the raffles and competitions, just search vintage and classic car competition online and on social media. We've also put links and details in the show notes below. So thanks so much, Tim. It's been a real pleasure. And before you go, Tim has offered a discount code just for the listeners. You can use code SAM15 to get 15% off your chance to win a classic car. All the links are in the show notes below. If you have enjoyed this episode, please do give us a like and subscribe wherever you're listening. And if you want to watch, you can also go over to YouTube and follow the old car lady. If you'd like to share your own cars, memories and stories and to be part of a brilliant community, just come and join us on Facebook, the Old Car Lady Classic Car Community Group. It's growing like mad, and you'd be very welcome to come along and join Ed. You can find me on all the social media channels at the old car lady, and until next time, happy motoring.