It all led up to this...
I've always been a petrolhead, by the age of three it was easy to find me, I'd be standing in the driving seat of the nearest unlocked car, going 'Brrrruummm, Bruuaaannnptpt' etc and pretending to swing the wheel from side to side. By the age of 5 I'd learned how to release the handbrake, how to put the key in the ignition and turn it, and also that if you spend a day on the beach patiently shovelling sand in through the open window of dad's car, you get into a lot of trouble.
By the age of 9 my hero was "The Bandit", and my Grandad would sit patiently smiling through Smokey and the Bandit 1/2/3, Cannonball run 1/2/3/etc and Dukes of Hazard many, many times, as the only T.V. in the house was in the front room. I can still repeat the lines from Smokey and the Bandit word for word, with sound effects. I watched it again the other day (20 years on) and noticed that ol' Burt is wearing a girdle to hold his gut in. The rosy hue of youth, eh? My Dad always had an eye for flash motors too, hi-spec Jags being the weapon of choice.
By 16 I was a hopeless hippy and whilst asthetically attracted to cars and bikes I didn't see the need for one. I had legs and a bus pass and I wasn't afraid to use them (Well, ok the buses can be a nightmare when you're stoned out of your brains on whatever and looking like a cross between David Lee Roth and a homeless Native American Indian; "the Chavs" are merciless where I come from, and they'll never learn not to judge a book by it's cover). But when my Dad bagered me into sorting out my licence and then bought me a car, I coundn't think how I'd ever done anything without one (Thanks Dad). A 1 hour Bus journey became a ten minute drive. Memories of my young youth's dreams followed. So, now I'm hopelessly hooked on cars, and more importantly, the thrill of driving fast and skillfully. I learned, as always, from my mistakes.
When you lose, don't lose the lesson
I had an 1.4L ford escort with big alloy wheels (this is Essex, mate) that was so loud with no air filter it set car alarms off two streets away. It was quite fast for what it was, but I wanted rear wheel drive. After I'd driven that mercilessly into the ground, smashed it to bits a couple of times and rebuilt it, I graduated to 10 and 15 year old Japanese turbo cars, driving them to spectacular, deafening, black smokey destruction, then bought an import Carlos Saintz WRC edition Toyota Celica GTFOUR with Denso stickers all over the engine bay. That lasted 2 weeks and 1 day, before I crashed it into field at 100mph. Actually, I hit the curb head on with full lock, which tore the front wheels off and threw the front in the air. Then I hit a bush at about 80mph with the rear, which lifted the car into the air, then I hit a little tree at 55mph, then rolled 25 or so metres into the field. I blacked out at that point and came-to as the car made it's final roll back onto it's wheels. Frank Zappa was still going for it on the stereo as the car settled. I dragged myself out of the wreakage, wishing I had another car in which to try that bend again, and called my dad and the insurance company. A bloke stopped his car just to say that I was the third person that he'd seen crash there in the last week, then drove off. Thanks for the info, Dickhead. I feel much better now.
Desite my badly jolted back and bleeding head I still had the presence of mind to remove any spliff butts and/or paraphanalia from the car and chuck it in a ditch on the other side of the road. I hadn't been smoking that day, but that's not going to cut the custard with the old bill.
My dad turned up and helped me sort myself out (thanks dad), then we set about finding my phone, which had been in my top pocket and was now nowhere to be found. I stuck my head in through the squished side window opening and asked my dad to phone me, hoping I'd be able to hear it and so locate it in amongst the shattered glass and mud in the bottom of my car. He rang it and I couldn't hear anything, although I felt my right foot vibrating. I passed that off as a side effect of crashing and thought nothing of it. He phoned it again, the vibrating in my right foot became more noticable. I bent down and dug away at the track of freshly churned mud the car had made and Lo and Behold I saw the flash of the screen winking at me through a thin layer of earth. I dug it out and answered my Dad, sat in his car at the roadside.
'Where was it then?'
'You'd never believe me...'
The recovery truck arrived, although the nice tow man had to go and get a longer cable because I was so far into the field. When they called the next day about where to drop it, I gave them the address of the garage that had sold me the car. I had my doubts about the quality of the brakes after that major lock up, and my suspicions were proven when they quietly disposed of it with hardly any fuss (they might have thought I was dead, given the state of the car). But I didn't make any fuss either, after all, the police would have only said "...and why were you doing 125 on a 60mph road, sir?..." - They also stopped selling turbo imports; a week after I gave them their prezzie all you could see on the forecourt when you drove past was european non turbo's. They probably did think I had died.
Big boys toys
So, it was inevitable that I would progress through to something a bit special. You see, I was an Electrician and plant mechanic by this time, so that, my interest in cars and my Grandad's wilingness to answer the stupidest questions when I was younger (he was a car mechanic who repaired bombers in the war), meant I knew my stuff and was prepared to buy a real monster. After a long sea voyage my low, black, mean-as-fuck looking Nissan Skyline Gts Turbo arrived in England and I set about making it faster and lighter.
The big wide alloys and suspension were perfect, even though I lost a couple of fillings the ride was so hard under 70mph. It got chipped, de-catted, race air and oil filters, high impact gear oil, Race brakes, iridium plugs with 0.8mm gap, double plate racing clutch, welded rear diff and stripped out so all that was left were the front seats and centre console. It was as light as fuck and made 337hp on the dyno at the wheels on 104ron fuel. My mate alex Alex called it the 'Ferrari killer'. It did 0-60mph in just under 5seconds and the fastest I'd ever had it on english roads was 140mph (had 1000+ revs left but there was trucks n stuff in the way). So all that was left was to have an adventure.
Pilgrimage
Nurburgring Nordshleife, Germany. 13+ miles of the most dangerous racetrack in the world. The Gumball rally leaving London on the same night as us and heading all the way to Germany and on to Poland as quickly as they could. In a word, Perfect.
My best friend Dave and I were trundling down the M20 towards Dover at 60mph, waiting for the first Gumballers to fly past and waving at people gathered on the bridges to watch the gumballers go past when one appeared, flying up behind us in a 'Diesel Power' BMW M3, flashing his lights furiously at us and peering at our car before realising we weren't Gumballers and tearing off again. We kept our measured pace and not long after he'd disappeared over the horizon 6 police bikes went past at about 120mph in perfect formation. It wasn't long before we saw our first Gumballer again, only this time he was hemmed in between 6 police bikes in the lay-by and was receiving a proper good bollocking. Discretion is the better part of valour I say, especially when British Big Brother is watching and He's got highly trained police bikers to command. Even if I do leg it quite succesfully from the the powers that be from time to time, I wouldn't bother trying to outrun a police bike rider with a Ferrari, much less a diesel Beemer.
No one else appeared until we hit the Eurostar terminal, where we found a good few of the Gumballers in the car park. We wandered around looking at the cars for a bit, went in and bought our tickets then proceeded to customs and excise, who asked the most anal questions in an intimidating manner (well, they thought it was, anyway).
'What was the purpose of your visit to India in 2003, sir?' (to Dave)
'What is the purpose of your journey today?'
'This is a one way ticket sir, don't you plan to return?
'What is the purpose of these questions and your pointless jaded paranoid existence?' I wanted to say, but kept my mouth shut.
The French customs (they were the british side of the channel so you can just drive off the train and go) were fine. We just got a grunt and a bit of vague interest in the car. We drove on to the train, chilled out and waited.
After 45 mins we drove off the train to the most amazing sight; hundreds of people waiting at the side of the road to wave and cheer as we (and the gumballers, of course...) rolled slowly through them. I doubt I'll ever experience anything like that in my life ever again. So we gave 'em a nice bit of wheelspin and shot off after a super quick GT2. He soon disappeared and we tucked in behind an Aston martin Db9 instead, who we could see had a cinema-screen sized sat-nav, as we didn't have a clue where we were going. We took B-roads all the way to Belgium, after dicovering that, as they seem to drive quite sensibly, French drivers don't like to be passed at 120mph+, they start honking and flashing and shouting; great fun. We answered with cries of 'HawHeeHaawHeeHaaw!' etc and pre-emptive middle fingers as we flew past.
We stayed with the Aston until we ran out of petrol and tore into a petrol station in Belgium where loads of car nuts had gathered in the hope of seeing some famous faces and cool cars. All they'd got so far was us, and whilst we weren't gumballers they still showed a lot of interest in us and the car and one even took my autograph! In years to come, my son, that will still be worth fuck all.
Before we left the forecourt we were given details of the the speed cameras and cops stationed along the next stretch of road, but we weren't overly bothered. My licence and insurance didn't cover me for European roads and I didn't have any 'ticket money' as such, so I wasn't planning on stopping for anything short of a pile up or a piss. We saw plenty of cops on the way through France and belgium, dressed like they were in the SAS, with guns, stood next to crappy white peugeot 406's, quite often in the middle of running towards their cars waving their arms because they'd heard us roaring up the road. That was all we ever saw of them.
We ended up in Luxembourg, totally lost without the cinematic GPS. We went up and down, up and down, and every road led to the centre of town. A couple of lads in a polo were tearing it up through some tunnels and small twisty service roads, doing laps around where we were parked up, drinking red bull. Dave was mad to chase them. We got back on to the road to Germany eventually, after asking various cab drivers the way in broken French and meandering down roads studded with the odd brothel. I did have my one and only 'whoops I'm on the wrong side of the road' drama, just about then. We were flying down a fastish road when we saw lights in the near distance, flashing like mad. We were like; 'whats this nutter up to?', and it was only when he swerved onto the other side of the road to avoid us that we realised we were the ones on the wrong side of the road...
Near the Border with Germany we came across two Ferraris, an Enzo and a F50
, and did the whole 'we'll fly past you while you video us, then we'll move over and slow down to 100 and video you tearing past' thing, which was cool, but we'd bought a map by then and when they took the wrong turn-off we split, and as we were tearing down the dead centre of a two lane, tightly curved right but beautifully banked German motorway slip road we got a shock.The police had coned off the right lane, gradually but quite sharply and had a mean looking euro stlye M3 and it's subdued looking driver firmly in their custody. They weren't expecting us, and neither were we them, but they'd got some warning from the sound of the exhaust, which could be heard from some distance away, so they were already waving at us angrily and stepping forward and I was forced to throw the car sideways to avoid the cones cars and big moustache of the shitting himself copper who's face passed across the windscreen from left to right far too close for comfort, wheels screeching engine roaring, and tore off down the autobahn as fast as I could. It all happened so quickly we sat stunned as I tore up the overtaking lane at 160, I swear I saw red and green lights in the distance once but I was too focused on avoiding lorries and concrete lane dividers to care, they'd catch up or they wouldn't, no use doing anything except driving hell bent for leather, which I did for some 45 minutes after doubling back over the border then coming back into Germany at a place called Aachen that was apparently bombed to total oblivion in the 2nd World War and then rebuilt afterwards. I turned in just before the bright lights of a service station and dropped a gear, making the engine bellow quite loudly and making the tyres scrabble as we scrubbed off the speed sharply. It was only then we noticed the big BMW M5 police cars. I damn near shit my pants until I realised they were all parked next to some huts, all of which were in darkness. The highway patrol police station. I'd thought it was a slip road for the services. Bugger...
However that proved quite pleasingly uneventful, so we got food and petrol and then watched the tape from the dashboard camera in the car hidden behind the squat concrete electricity transformer enclosure and ate sausage, which seems to be the only food we could find in Gemany besides McDonalds, which we went for from then on. Bad Guts.We'd been on the road from London for 6 hours, four hours of which we'd spent at high speed on the motorway and we fell asleep where we sat, without meaning too.
In the morning all was well. The cop cars had all disappeared off on their no doubt tightly scheduled, efficiently German rounds, and hadn't noticed us.
We drove (slowly in daylight) on the directions of my Mum's fiance (who we'd phoned as we still didn't really have a clue where we were going, despite the map), to the fabled Nurburgring, and after what seemed like days and days of boring grey skies and sensible German drivers (it was only two hours) we saw the banners for the circuit on the motorway overpasses and foot bridges and knew we'd nearly arrived at our destination.
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