Life Through a Petrolheads Eyes - Having a Hobby as a Job

Now I'm not 100% sure exactly what started my love for cars. I have never been dedicated to a particular marque and have always been happy to float between various ages and models.

I can however pin point a specific car that increased my love for both Japanese cars and rallying, the Subaru Impreza. At a rough guess I'm pretty sure it was about 1996 when my Dad purchased a new/used red Subaru Impreza Turbo 2000. The perfect fast daily of its time. I fell in love instantly and I can clearly remember being taken all over the country in this fantastic AWD turbo rally car for the road. I'm afraid I don’t have any pics of the car which is a real shame.

There are a couple of stories to do with this car. My father never competed but he was a fair driver and a local by-way provided a regular short cut quite often to get to one of our local pubs, this provided amusement for us as we often passed walkers on the same route wandering why we were driving a family saloon down a gravel track. I also remember being on our way to visit my grand parents in Hampshire, heading down the final back road in icy conditions only for the car to step out on a hair pin and my dad to hold the slide the whole way round. We have a lovely section of road near by that runs on the edge of a large estate and its another moment etched in my head, is my Dad battling a sports bike down that road with several passes being exchanged along the route, at the end the rider dismounted and my father got out to chat and shake hands. The final moment in this car was when my father let me drive it when I must have been about 9 or 10 and only just able to tip toe on the pedals on private land.

The brutal power, agility and boxer burble would return to me several times over the next 20+ years and I have never got bored of the classic shape Impreza.

The second time an Impreza arrived in the family it was purchased by my step father in the form of a genuine full Prodrive pack I'm sure it was a 95 WRX. The Prodrive pack included Recaro seats, bodykit, and some minor tuning mods. I was lucky enough to use the car for Auto testing at Kemble airfield even before I could legally drive on the road and it only fed my urge to own one even more



A friend of mine then managed to acquire a fantastic and now very rare STi 555 V limited RA. Amongst other things these are lighter with variable centre diff and low ratio gearbox. We paid £1800 I think at the time but now worth quite a considerable amount more if you can find one.















My mate had a young lad at the time and he would spend all his time out in the yard or workshop on his quad bike or attempting to fix things with us, it was awesome.

After years of managing to buy all sorts of sporty cars for under £1000 I finally managed to get my hands on a silver WRX. The early cars benefit from a closed deck block and TD05 turbo and I was lucky enough to get a 94'. I prefer the early V1 and V2 cars as they come with less bodykit. I didn't own the car very long as I soon figured I couldn't afford to run or cover the extortionate monthly insurance bill at the time.





The wheels were awful but I couldn't afford anything else at the time so had to keep them.

Of course whilst all of this was going on Prodrive and Subaru continued their success through the 90's and 00's with some of the biggest rally icons of all time, the late Colin and Richard. I managed to work in close proximity of some of these WRC cars and drivers over the years including work at Prodrive but more on that at a later date.

Several random cars later we get to my first white 94' RA. I traveled just the other side of the boarder in Wales for it and paid a lady in her 50's a grand some of £1700, at the time a fair amount of money for an old Impreza. However this was the Type RA, the closest you could buy to a road going rally car and the very cars that Subaru and Prodrive used to add the safety parts to make their rally cars. The RA come in very light for an AWD saloon at off the top of my head about 1250KG. As with pretty much every car I ever owned I set about modifying the car for fast road and track use. I owned the car two years built it up, stripped it back to OEM and then built it again. Then on a soggy spring morning on the way to work a lorry pulled out on me and I smashed into the side of it. It was enough for the insurance to write the car off, I crashed it on the Thursday and it was supposed to sell that weekend for £5.5k. I bought the car back of the insurance company and near double my money with the payout and parts in the end.















At one point I managed to pay my Dad back and let him loose at Castle Combe in the car and we shared a trackday together. I also used the car as a marketing tool for a company I worked for at the time and it worked really well. With over 300BHP and weighing around 1150kg's on very sticky tyres it was a hard car to be wet or dry.

My friend and I bought several more Imprezas in the time I owned the first white RA. At the time Subarus were cheap and could be broken for more in parts, plus we could take goodies off for our own builds.












After that I had an itch for various cars again but I always searched ebay and other websites for another early RA and it took me 4 years to find the right one and it was only down the road. It had an MSA cage with and STi engine and the shell was super clean. An old boy had built it in his garage with many new parts and I couldn't resist. I went down in mind to collect it and gave the guy £2500 cash straight away. The only issue was a miss fire, in the end we found out during a failed mapping day it was a split injector wire. I gave the car over winter to my goof friend Rose Race Cars and we went ahead and threw some considerable money at the car to make it track ready including and engine out rebuild and refresh. I used the car for the early part of the season to promote my own business and have some fun on track and it was just as good as I always remembered the Impreza being.















I sold the car to a couple of chaps that wanted to hill climb and sprint the car and as far as I'm aware its till going strong. I'm sure I will have another when the time comes.

I feel like this could be a great thread. As for next topic.... Rallying is a good enough start especially having just read about Imprezas!

Not going to lie as with any job sometimes you do sit down and wonder why you bother. But the other 90% I really enjoy. The hardest bit is often the abuse and ridicule you receive from people who are simply more than likely jealous of what you are doing. Gove it a go I'm sure you wont regret it.

As requested – Rallying next
The best drivers on the planet? High speeds on loose surfaces just feet away from trees or cliff edges, drivers and co-drivers with balls of steel.
The UK has always had a fond love for this great sport and id put that partly down to some rather impressive drivers since rallying began. The likes of Roger Clark, Jimmy McRae, Colin McRae and Richard Burns spring to mind as people who helped drive the passion of British people towards rallying. Not to mention great rally teams such as Prodrive and M sport.

My love for rallying began in two places. The first occurred as you may imagine in Wales. My parents both being self employed, used to drop me at the other side of the severn bridge most weeks to my grandparents, they would look after me whenever my parents were far to busy with work, something I didn’t really understand at the time but grew to realise why as I got older. My grandparents would collect me and we would head over the mountain to Abergavenny. On one of these journeys we suddenly found rally cars passing us on the opposite side of the road, as it turns out heading back to the paddock at Chepstow race course. The sound of Mk2 escorts and 90’s WRC cars burbling past got my petrolhead senses racing and I asked my Bampy if we could find where they were racing.

We found an opening to a forest on our left and parked up, walked down the track and to my excitement found the finish line to that particular stage. Bampy took me further down the stage and that was my first site of the Wyedean Forrest rally. A club level rally that echoes through the forest of dean once a year to this day, with often more than a hundred entries from historics to current WRC spec cars. It used to be early feb but now late November. My very first taste of being able to stand just meters from fully blown racing cars at full tilt. A pair of dedicated pilots in each car throwing tens of thousands of pounds worth of metal through an English forest…utter bliss.








Now I would urge everyone to go and enjoy rallying whilst it lasts. There are many local club rallies and in my eyes those are the ones to attend. However I must stress despite being allowed to stand in most places and view any stage you must be careful and have some common sense about where you place yourself. These cars move at high speed, are often out of control and take a long time to stop. It is essential that people use some common sense to avoid loosing the sport all together. I have seen whole families set up chairs literally a metre from the track in the past, only to be pebbled with rocks as an escort passes, happy to say they very quickly moved.



Also if you attend a rally wrap up warm and take a pack lunch









My second reason for my love for rallying was the opportunity from a young age to work for the infamous RallyDay at Castle Combe. I used to volunteer on the day each year and spend my morning marshalling the paddock. The sounds and smells of rally cars moving about at 6am on a Saturday morning was mesmerizing. As a thanks for our help we would all go to WRC Wales together but the rally itself was only half of it. The road trip over was the other. A distinct memory is of all of us rally fans meeting in Chippenham at the then RallyDay owners house. Amongst the cars turning up, an original Lancer Turbo, an Evo 5 and an at the time brand new Mk1 Focus RS. A high speed convoy commenced to and from Wales that evening and for a young petrol head that combined with watching the likes of Burns and Colin battle the special stage, it was a night to behold.


Sadly Brian, one of the owners of RallyDay passed away suddenly a couple of year ago due to a brain tumor and I was only saddened with this news early last year. He was a fantastic but quiet character that between him and his business partner had the balls and dedication to put on such a fantastic event. Another moment that sticks in my mind was that one year when Richard Burns was very ill and as it turned out only a matter of weeks from passing away, I was working in the pitlane at Castle Combe. A Porcshe Cayenne sat in the corner of the pitlane. As it turns out Brian had invited Richard to RallyDay that year, and despite his current condition he was still attending, sat with a couple of friends in that very car just feet away from me, watching the rally cars launch onto the stage like a true enthusiast. Despite his serious illness at the time he still wanted to come and watch and enjoy rallying, what actually turned out probably to be the last time he saw his own Prodrive cars hit a rally stage at full tilt . Weeks later we learnt of his death and realised we were some of the last fans to ever see him. He didn't wander the paddock as he couldn't manage it but he sat there all day enjoying the view. Something that will always stick in my mind and was truly humbling now I look back at it.













My next and final connection with rallying was working for Prodrive several years ago in their Carbon factory. As part of the induction we got to look around and sit in all of the heritage cars I sat in the 6R4 of Jimmy McRae, and the Subaru's of Richard and Colin. It was a reasonable place to work and the comradery in most parts was exactly how you would expect a high level motorsport business to be.























Sorry for the potato cam on some pics this was a while ago now lol. So that the conclusion of why I love rallying I guess. Think we will do my odd love for Alfa Romeos next . But I'm also keen to share my season of working at Spa and the Nürburgring too as I'm sure some of the cars from there will make you drool .

Thanks for reading.

My god,this gets better and better. If i were a publisher,you would be offered a book deal.
Since that is not the case,i hope this thread lives on forever in internet- space for many more enthusiasts to discover
Such good reading,so many awesome pictures.
Brings back many memories from some 30 years ago,when my aunt and her husband were working and living at the castle of Duras. I live in Belgium btw. As kids age 14 or so we attended the Haspengouwrally since it passes through the immense forest that was around the castle. That was heaven...
I have been to many rallys here in Belgiym,but Haspengouw is my home rally. We have the Legend boucles de Spa( now Bastogne) too.
And Robert Droogmans (google him) lives a few houses down my street,he ha an awesome collection of historic rallycars,he still competes.
Man,i look forward t moooaaar from you👍👍👍👍👍👌👌👌👌👌

This is brilliant. I love seeing someone follow a passion throughout their life.

Another part of the fleet at the time was a 350bhp Integrale which I had the chance to maintain and drive and I loved the chance to drive a rally icon without the worry of maintenance and owning one.





lastly on the Italian car front I got to meet the man behind the wheel of this 500 Abarth championship car. After coming up to me asking about advice on cars and driving I asked him why he ran a 500 on track instead of his various Porsche road cars, his simple answer was "its more fun and mire me". It was none other than lead singer from the Prodigy Keith Flint .







Oh and this rare beauty because I saw it run at Spa and Silverstone on a trackday at full chat. doesn't matter how rare or how old, cars should be used as intended and not be kept away from the public eye or in museums. How much money do you have to have to run a Ferrai P4 as a track car lol.

This thread is great! I’ve enjoyed reading it, I’m looking forward to the next instalment!
Certainly had great opertunities over the years!

Living the dream...that you worked for yourself. Hat off to you sir. And awesome reading and pictures.

Just wow👍👍