Stories from Super Touring. Hello and welcome to this week's
episode of Stories from Super Touring.
Now in this week's episode, it's a little special that came from
Goodwood at the recent members meeting, which featured a very,
very special field of over 40 Super Tours.
Now, despite it being a packed weekend, we did manage to get a
few interviews in and here are a few of the best of them.
We hope you enjoy. John Clellon, I'm at Goodwood
Members meeting with you. It's quite a special occasion
this especially for fans of Super Touring like ourselves and
all our watch our listeners. Yeah, I mean, I don't exactly
know how many, but there must be 40 odd Super Tours here and a
good mix across from Vauxhall's, Alfa Romeos, Peugeots, the whole
lot. They're all here.
Not all are running. There's probably about 12 that
are running. And the trouble with that is
that these cars are now getting on about, they're getting on.
They're 2528 years old and they take about a looking after.
So if you go out and blow something up.
But if you like Anthony Reed drive it, then it'll break.
So talking about that, you obviously own your own super
tour here. How did that first come about?
My youngest son Jamie found it on Facebook and he said that's
her car, it's your car, it's chassis #1 and we should buy it.
Well, I'm not sure why we should buy it.
What do we do? Well, they're, they're running a
series for these super Tours again.
All right, OK, fine. So we went down and looked at
it, but it was a bit more to the story because this car went out
when batters fell out with each other and there were no V
eights. There were two litre cars for
like 2 years. This car went out.
Derek Warwick drove it with the Grand Prix, the Australian Grand
Prix deckaling along with a guy called Peter Brock.
Brockie and I had shared the car in 1992 or something later, but
I can't remember when it was. Now he drove this car in
qualifying. He rolled it coming through down
the hangers, down the the the long straight up batter and he
rolled it into the chase, rolled over, put a dent in the roof,
got the car back together, did the race, but there's still a
dent inside that roof. Oh wow.
And the guy I bought it from had no idea what that was about.
So that guaranteed to me, because you can put a chassis
plate on anything. I knew this car.
I knew certain little bits about it, but I definitely knew about
the kink inside the the roof skin.
So it's my car that's 197. And this is the first time
you've been out in it for a while, isn't it?
Four years. How was it getting back into it?
Was it like wearing an old shoe again?
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I mean, I, I haven't sat
in a car of any sort for the last four years.
We've just been too busy at work.
And it was literally fired up, pulled the crash arm on and went
out and it just felt like it's always done.
It's really, really nice. Yeah.
And we saw you out there in practise, and it didn't take
long for you and Steve to become acquainted with each other
again. Now.
We all know you're all great friends again now, but that must
have been a hell of a feeling for you to suddenly be back
wheel to wheel with one of your old sparring partners from from
the from. The hero.
We're not. We're not trying to win a world
championship. Yeah, we're just demoing cars.
And to be fair, Steve's never driven that Peugeot either.
No, my car, I know it. You're right.
It's like a glove. You just, it just fits
perfectly. But four years away and I'm four
years older. Me.
You just got to work a bit harder at it.
So what are you hoping for from the weekend in this car?
Is it just a bit of fun? It's.
Just fun. Yeah, it's absolutely a bit of
fun and I think it's great that Goodwood have have brought this
together and brought as many cars out of the woodwork.
There's a lot on static display, I get that.
But the number of people that have come up to me in the last
two days and said fantastic to see these cars.
I remember it. I was a massive touring car fan
in in the period I think people know here.
At Goodwood. There may be more than looking
at old E types and some of them all things.
I think what we're looking at now is the likes of that becomes
people recognise it, it will mean more to them.
So I, I think that's, that's the good part.
Must give you a buzz as well with all these people coming up
to you still recognising you. Rubbish my ego up really nicely.
But no, it's it's great. And I mean, you were fantastic
times. They were.
We're talking about an era where there were more of us being paid
to drive touring cars. The Formula One drivers were
being paid to drive Formula One cars.
And you know, we probably didn't appreciate just what we had, how
good it was. And the budgets were absolutely
enormous. And we would life every
component on the car. I mean, some components would do
a practise session, then qualifying session, and you
would change your engines and gearboxes.
And that's why though, you've got to be really careful how
long you run them now and how often you run them.
Because if they need replacement parts or if we break a part,
you've got to really re, you've got to reverse engineer it
because you can't go down and buy one off the shelf somewhere.
No, we, we've spoken to owners and they've said you want to go
and buy a part and they say OK, we'll do you 20.
And he's like, I only want one and you can't afford it, you
know, and there's no way you're going to go through 20 so.
I, I was lucky. I had a, I had a really good guy
who was, we give him some components and he milled.
Them out of. Cabin cabin just for us to check
them and Yep, that's fine. That bolts on great right.
Can we now make it properly? And he was.
Brilliant. And he made us quite a lot of
suspension parts. But then Jamie found a guy in
Sweden that had an old cinema completely full of Vectra
components from 96979899. And we walked into this
Aladdin's cave of bits and we bought an engine of them, we
bought a gearbox of them, bought suspension parts, all manner
thing. And we're walking through it and
he said do you want any doors? And Jamie said no, no, we've got
lots of doors. We make our own now.
Why? He says, oh, come and see this.
So we went out of back of the workshop and there was three
floors high of Vectra doors from all over and Jamie spied one
that was about 3 floors up and he said that's your Donington 98
door up there. I said you know that.
And up the the pillar on the side when we want to race there
was a Laurel went on it. So I said to the guy, I'll tell
you what we'll do. We need to agree the price of
the slot that's lying on the floor here.
If I climb up there and sign that door for you, I want some
discount off of a slot here which we agreed on.
Nice. So signing his door was worth a
significant number of Swedish SEC.
Ever the businessman. Correct.
Talking of 98 in Donnington, we've we've watched Donnington
98 with you very recently actually that for me, the zenith
of Super Reedy talks about Brands Hatch 98 where him and
Rydell came to blows as a zenith.
But for me, that race with Nigel and you and you winning and
coming out on top, that for me is peak Super Touring.
I'm I'm sure you'd probably. Agree.
It was. And you know Nigel, God bless
him, he drove that card really well.
Yeah, he drove it really well. In fact, we would discuss this
at dinner last night. I was sitting at a table with
State Parish and Michael Rutter and a few others and Anthony was
there and Michael Rutter said something about what was Mansell
like when he came in and drove the four.
So actually he was, he was pretty good.
And Anthony said yeah, I beat him in that race at Donnington.
I said no, you didn't. You fell off, you ran out of
skill and fell off on your own and you blamed Nigel for it.
I said that was not to do, Nigel.
So that was the oldest, yes. Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, anyway, Nigel had the team been on the phone to me, it was
a wet race drying. And what you do is you play with
the bars, you play with the brake balance most importantly.
And the team went on the phone to Nigel saying change the brake
balance bit more to the front, bit more to the front and so on.
And he wouldn't know because he wasn't in a touring car every
every other week. And I could see when I was
catching him, it was just getting a bit more and a bit
more and a bit, and then he just outbreaked himself.
Yeah, and one final thing. We've had enough time with you
already taking enough of your time.
One other 4 driver that year that actually did go on a winner
race was your very good friend Will Hoy.
He would have loved an event like this, wouldn't?
He, ah, Will would have been right up for this.
Will would have been, He'd have loved it and everything about
it. And, you know, he's just got
that that whole he was a party guy and Good was a party.
You know it's. It's it's about.
Enjoying your weekend, and there's a bit of recent thrown
in as well, by the way, but it's a party and that's how it works.
So Will would have just, you know, loved this place you.
Know John, as ever, thanks for all the time you give us and
thanks for bringing down the car.
I know it's a heck of a trip for you coming down all this way,
but it's great to see the Vectra in the flesh and great to see
you out on track with this. So thank you from all of.
Us. It's a pleasure.
Thank. You.
Thank you. Hi there, Andrew, thanks for
joining us. Sparing some time out, your
probably very busy day running this beautiful BMW 3 Series.
Now we we spoke a bit back in brand sachet Supertorium power
three last year when you brought the car along.
So it's brilliant to have you back at Goodwood because we it's
kind of past you getting the car prepped, I presume for, for
qualifying later on. What goes into prepping a car of
this kind of quality and age for a weekend like this where it's
really being driven in anger in the shootout?
If I'm on it's not a huge amount.
This car does very little anyway so it's only really ever done
demonstrations and stuff. So when the owner brought the
car, we, we did a lot crack tested like key components, had
the engine rebuilt after that it really hasn't done much.
So for for this weekend, it was obviously a good check over.
But in terms of setup, we haven't done anything since we
initially set it up to a a works BMW setup sheet and and we've
just driven it from from that point.
So it's obviously great to have the car here.
You know, I believe it's the best history car here with the
garlands here, it's one Nurburgringer 95, Spa and Spa 24
hour 96 and Spa 24 hour 97. So I don't think they'll really
get any better than that. So.
It it doesn't, no. And as you say to to win those
illustrious races makes it a car with, as you say, probably great
history in some of the cars out here which you look around and
some of them have some pretty good history as well.
Don't. They yeah, there's some some
fantastic cars here. You know, obviously I, I can
look at the Rapid Fit Mondeos and and stuff like that.
I can relate and remember those. But for me, when we unloaded
this car and brought it here, this is like, this is the car
here. You just wouldn't see it these
days. The same car, the same chassis
winning all those races, you know, they're chopped and
changed different shells or complete new cars all the time
in, in, in this day and age. But back then they, they made
them work. And, and yeah, this is, I was
saying to, to one of our guys, this is probably the, one of the
favourite cars we've got in our workshop.
I, I could own this and not actually drive it and just
uncover it occasionally in the garage and go, yeah, that's
cool. And cover it back up.
You know, it's, it's one of those cars.
So really driving it, you know, I'm not driving it this weekend,
but I've driven it before. It needs more horsepower, feels
quite underpowered in in terms of moderate or current day race
cars, but it would be silly to start putting A2 and half litre
engine and stuff like that and just just run it as it is.
Yeah, absolutely. And and I guess it as you say,
you know, you're very experienced with running
historic cars and car store generations.
What what she makes this car such a success, especially in in
a category where everyone was spending so much money getting
their cars to a high level of preparation.
You can really see the money that's spent on these cars when
we when we stripped it, just all the carbon duct in and stuff,
you can tell it was manufacturer budget.
You know, every, every little bit there's some really quite
simple things, you know, like the, the door lights are about
as simple as you'll get, but it's almost as high as I feel
that it's simple in areas, but purposeful.
And then there's other areas like the suspension and all the
suspension arms and the, the machining on stuff like that and
all the carbon work under the front shows you, it's
manufacturer funded in the day. So it's quite interesting
really. You know, when you look back and
it was touring cars during the endurance racing as well, again,
you'll never ever see that again.
They ran a slightly detuned engine and stuff.
But I was showing some of our guys yesterday, some of the
footage from those races, and you just look at the scale and
how many people are there. As I say, to have it with us is
something I'm I'm really proud of.
Andrew, thank you very much for sparing some of your time this
afternoon. Wish you every success for the
week and then the sheet out as well.
Thank you. Anthony, we're back here at
Goodwood. You're at Goodwood, you're at,
you're a mega star at Goodwood. You've worked here for many,
many years. This time you've got your Ford
Mondeo out from 2000, and we're being moved along here to get
away the we are. What an excellent way to be
moved. But this is a car that has been
well known to have a lot of issues running because they're
so trick and so sophisticated. How's it run today?
Well, it's the best I've experienced because, I mean, I
came to Goodwood, yeah, two or three years ago to drive it on
the hill. It never even made it out of the
paddock. Right.
So I did do a couple of laps testing at Lambda in Wales.
Yeah. And it seemed to go quite well
there, but I haven't driven it since.
And then we had problems this morning with the fueling, but
they've traced it to a faulty ignition switch.
So we'll we'll put on a decent show tomorrow.
Yeah, but I don't think we're going to win it, no.
Goodwood have put a special event on specifically for Super
Tours this weekend. Celebrate.
We've got a grid, but not a grid, but we've got a paddock of
about 4045 different Super Tours, some static, some
running. It's just brilliant for any fan
of the period of touring cars, isn't it?
I. Haven't seen a field like that
since the World Cup of pull. We can't.
And they must have had maybe 50 cars there.
Everything BMWs, Audi's, the lot, Fords and of course the
Vauxhall Vectra. Yeah, yes.
And I was on Team GB with John Clevers and but I've never seen
a field like today in 35 years, no.
No, it's wonderful, isn't it? And why do you think Super
Touring still has that pull even now, 30 years on?
Maybe for some of the years. Well, it, it was the cars, the
level of manufacturer involvement and of course big
names from touring cars plus the F1 drivers, you know, Paul
Ricard, we have Hans Stoop, for example.
I don't think Nigel Mansell was there on that occasion.
But other big names that have race in Formula One like
Emmanuelle Piro, the the exposure.
Yeah, Bernie was getting so annoyed with the success of
Super Touring he cancelled the TV coverage for Paul Ricard.
And if you speak to Barry, Barry Nutley who commentates here, he
was involved on the TV productions in period and he
said they used to check the numbers and British cheering
cars had more viewing viewership than F1.
Yeah, yeah, it's, it's, it's, it's incredible, isn't it, the
uniqueness of the period. We normally see you out in your
Nissan in the last few years, maybe a Brands Hatch.
You're you're in the Mondeo today.
What what are the differences between between the two cars?
The, the Mondea is the quickest Supertur I've driven,
state-of-the-art, a Formula One car with mud guards.
It, it, you know, it was, had the most power.
It was the, the, the chassis dynamics was superb, but it
didn't quite suit my driving style.
It was edgy at the rear end, whereas the Nissan Primera
suited my driving style. It was, you know, had my DNA in
it and so that was my favourite car and I got the most success.
Eight wins and 11 pole positions, although one of the
wins was taken away for Ricard pumping into.
It yes, and one final we've we've taken enough of your time
already, Andy, but one final question is you've you've spent
the day on the track with many of your contemporaries.
John Cleland, Matt Neil, Steve Super.
It must be a real thrill to be out on track with with such
great names once again. Yeah.
Brings the memories flooding back.
Yeah. It's a real privilege.
Yeah. Because you're not likely to get
many of those scribers together again in the future all at the
same event. No.
I mean, the one notable absentee is probably Alan Menya.
I haven't seen him this weekend. No, he's not here.
No, sadly not. But yeah, that would be a great
addition. Lauren Tayano, I don't think.
He's here. No, not seeing Laurent, but but
no, Anthony, just thank you for keeping us entertained over all
these years and and, you know, keeping these cars going because
fans, our listeners, our watchers, they love it.
Thank you. I mean, if it weren't for people
like Alvin Powell, Yeah, or Richard Wheeler, a lot of these
cars wouldn't be here. Oh.
Exactly. Yeah, you're right.
You're right. But no, Anthony, good luck
tomorrow. Thank you for your time.
Thank you. Top man Durant.
Arphine, John, thank you for joining us on what is, I'm sure
a very busy weekend for you here at Goodwood.
Just I guess, first of all, you look after a large number of the
Super tours that we see running at different events and you run
them very competitively. Generally, what goes into the
level of preparation needed to run those cars at such a high
level? What's good is that they're very
well developed cars. From back in period when they
were, when they were built. So we have for some of them
quite a large stock of spares. The problems come is when you
don't have the parts and you're having to recreate parts and and
recreate some of the knowledge that goes with that.
They're complicated cars, you know, there's a lot that went
into them and thus there's now quite a lot that goes into them
now in order to keep them running.
And so getting a bit more into what you're mainly here for this
weekend on the sea of touring side, the car behind you, the 96
Honda Accords, but you're running in the sea touring sheet
out with Matt Neil. What is, are there any quirks
with this Honda that are different in terms of the
preparation and how it runs compared to some of the other
sea tours that you run? No, to be honest, out of out of
all of the cars we run, the Honda is one of the, I don't
want to say simplest, but it but it's one of the more basic cars
we have. The engine is through Neil Brown
is a very well trodden path, you know, so getting parts for that
is relatively easy and maintaining that relatively
easy. It's an extract gearbox like a
lot of the cars run and again parts for that is relatively
straightforward. So so keeping this car running
is is one of the easier cars. Lovely.
And in terms of the sheet out itself being a bit more of a
competitive event than maybe some of your demo runs that we
we see, what level do you think this Honda can compared to some
of the later cars in period Run 2?
I think the cars are are more evenly matched than perhaps you
think that period from 96 to 2000, yes, the later cars are
faster, but because there's so limited track running here, I
think it's much more to do with the driver and how quickly they
can get comfortable in the car to get down to the to get down
to a good lap time. And just finally, in terms of
the the weekend set up, we've had practise on the Saturday
morning, we're leading up on Saturday afternoon into
qualifying and then there's a practise session before the
final tomorrow. Naturally these are quite
delicate machines. What's the level of running and
I guess the level of anger that can be put into running these
cars whilst also making sure we're keeping them in one bit in
the lead up to the finals tomorrow?
Certainly in the, in the two demo runs that we've run one
this morning and run tomorrow, they're, they're, they're fast,
you know, so, so they, they, they're exercising the cars
properly, but they're not, they're not running them super
aggressive, super aggressively. Yeah.
But in the shootout, well, we're going to be telling Matt to, you
know, push because we want to do well.
So we'll get him to push as hard as we can.
John, thanks very much for your time this afternoon.
Good luck in the show over the weekend.
Anytime. Thank you very much.
Thank you. Alvin, we're here at Goodwood
and you've got a car that you own behind you.
That must be quite exciting. Yeah, well, I don't know whether
you know, but in 2002 I bought the whole team.
Yes, they built. Four cars, yeah, the winning car
is the menu car behind me. This one finished second in the
championship and I've also got chassis 3 #4 is in New Zealand.
Right. So I've been told by Anthony
Reed to ask how you came about owning all these cars.
And we'll go again. And I've been asked by Reedy.
He told me, Alex, make sure you ask Alvin how he came about
owning these cars. Well, in a word, I stole them.
I can't see how much it pays for them, but I did have probably
the best deal. What a good deal.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. But.
My negotiating skills were pretty good at the time.
Really. I had, you know, the big
business and I was used to dealing with managing directors
who used to come to see me to do a deal, right.
Not the salesman. Yeah, I got being funny, but he
was a hard. Deal.
Yeah, no. So in periods 60 people would
work on these cars over a race weekend for Prodrive.
So how on earth do you keep it going as basically a one man
band? Oh.
My wife hasn't seen me for three weeks ago.
And how does she feel about that I.
Retired from motor racing? Four years ago.
Every year I'm selling them on Deos, right?
The end of the year comes, you know, I still haven't sold them.
I'm selling them next year. This has gone on for about 5 or
6 years. But I got to be honest, I get
into the stage zone it is and my team that used to work with me,
the both guys have finished. They don't want to do it again
and it's left me like on my own trying to do things, which is
very, very difficult because they're very high beaten.
Yes, yeah, yeah, I mean, you just have to look at the engine
Bay is is is open now. You just have to look at how far
back and how tricky, yeah, that car is.
Anthony has told us how you know the the things go through things
and. You want to see, you want to see
the insider that. Yeah, the.
Moment the ignition switches. Fair enough.
Right, so it's sorting. Out that.
Way. Starting sometimes.
Stopping, you know so. Whether we'll be out in the next
the next race, yeah, well. Who knows?
5:00 Yeah. But the shootout tomorrow.
Is that's right, Yeah. It's just qualifying.
We get it going for that. Yeah, that'll be OK, as long as
Anthony can give it a run. Yeah.
And he was really over the moon with the car this.
Morning. Brilliant.
And he did a couple of laps, came in and he said bloody hell,
what's the matter? He said nothing.
It felt good, so I came in. Fab.
So, you know, I was over the moon.
Yeah. And but we've, we've had this
starting problem all day. Yeah.
So. Hopefully we we Can you believe
a cigarette lighter saved the day.
Really. Because our little gas gas
soldering iron needs a lighter to fire it up.
So to get this on the grid tomorrow we can find some guy
who smokes himself to death. Talking about getting on the
grid, the one final question I've got for you, it must be, it
must be exciting having somebody with the, you know, the presence
and the the reputation of Anthony Reid to come and race
your car. Oh.
Yeah, I've I've, well, this is one of my cars as well, that
Paul Ryan. Yes, yes, and.
Crystal Paul has driven this at Goodwood.
Andy Roush has driven it at Goodwood.
Oh, wow. Yes, yeah, You know, and Anthony
Reed has driven that. Yeah, three times at Goodwood.
So, you know, I know Anthony quite well.
I trust him in. The car, yes, so.
That's the important thing, you know what I mean?
Yeah, no, absolutely yes. You've got such a such a rare
piece of touring car history there.
You don't want to. Don't just entrust it to
anybody. Do you know so?
Yeah, I'm, I'm the amount of people that have come up to me
this weekend and thanked me for bringing it you.
Yeah, it's it's been amazing. Yeah.
Because this God, look at it now.
It's the only one that's got a huge crowd around it.
There's there's, there's, there's a level of mystique
around. It was one of my favourite super
tours in period. It was the colours.
It was just the fact that Alan and Anthony drove them.
It was just, it was a perfect mix of and yeah, you're right.
Look at, look at the crowds around it now.
It's wonderful all the time. But no.
So to add to that, Alan, thank you so much for bringing it
along and sharing it with us and letting Redie loose with it.
My pleasure, I love showing it. All I don't blame you.
I don't blame you. And that's it from our driver
and personality interviews from Goodwood.
We'll shortly be sharing our video footage that we took over
the weekend with you all on our Patreon channels and through our
social media feeds. Make sure you join us again next
week on Stories from Super Touring, where we'll be looking
at the final win of a very popular BTCC driver.
In fact, he was mentioned in today's episode.
It's Will Hoy and we look back at his final BTCC reign at
Silverstone for Ford in 1998. Until then, we'll see you next
week. Goodbye.