| Welcome to Rear Wheel Drive, my personal website and blog about the automotive world and all things powered by the right pair of wheels. I grew up in the family's garage business, Horrell Motors and have spent my life around cars. My first word was "car" and my mother tells me that aged 2 from my pushchair I could identify parked cars from their hubcaps!! I haven't got any better since. | My first word was "car" and my mother tells me that aged 2 from my pushchair I |
Following the death of my Grandpa Ernie, who started Horrell Motors in 1935, my dad David joined my Uncle Steve to run the sales side of the business, while Steve, an ace auto electrician and all round mechanical guru, looked after the workshop. I was hooked, and spent my time polishing and valeting cars for sale; I was carrying out pre delivery inspections by the time I was 13, and had sold my first car at 16! While the showroom was packed full of dreary British Leyland machinery and subsequently Zastava's, the workshop looked after a far more interesting mix, including C-Type Jaguars, 1920s Rolls Royce Phantoms, when the mechanics weren't tweaking their Holbay Hunter GLS's, Chevy Camaros, Jeep Cherokees, and RS2000 droop snoot Escort vans, that is. The business was taken over by Peak Performance in 1989 and so my own destiny in the world of cars took a different direction.
I passed my driving test first time aged 17 and a couple of months, and promised myself that I should only ever own and drive Rear Wheel Drive cars, a mantra I have held onto ever since. My first car was a Triumph Spitfire that my dad bought for me aged 13, which we sadly never got to drive as the chassis was rotten! I bought another one when I was 16, but the first car I owned having passed my test was a Ford Capri mk2 1.6S, which I bought from a neighbour for 500 quid. A 1968 Triumph Vitesse Mk1 hardtop followed the Capri, which its creamy straight 6, lovely Michelotti body, tight turning circle, and snap oversteer. At 18 I bought a Ford Cortina mk1, complete with Rover V8, cherry bombs, flip front, full cage, cobra buckets, and Jag mk2 axle, with a welded up diff for smoky burnouts.
After my obsession with British Sports Cars I got into kit cars, thanks to a neighbour's boyfriend who had a gorgeous sounding Dutton B Plus, with a Vitesse straight Six on open Copper exhaust pipes that you could hear over a mile away. He replaced the Dutton with a 1700 X Flow powered Sylva Leader, which I eventually bought from him. While I had been to Santa Pod with the Cortina, the Sylva was the car in which I took my first motorsport steps, getting to the final of the 1993 Cars and Car Conversions magazine Converted Car of the Year competition, which was held at Curborough sprint course in the Midlands. While I have always been a fan of Caterhams (and still am) I love the Sylva marque and how it's founder Jeremy Phillips never copies, but always comes up with original, simple and effective designs. Indeed, Caterham are said to have started their now very well established one make series because they got so fed up with being beaten by these pesky Sylva Phoenix Clubmans in the national kit car championships!
While the Leader, based on Viva double wishbone suspension and associated underpinnings, was a superb handling car, it wasn't the prettiest looking thing and it was when I took the Leader to a CCC Castle Combe track day that I fell in love with the beautiful shape of the Sylva Fury and knew I had to have one and fulfilled that dream in 1996. I still own my Fury, which is powered by a stout Cosworth XE red top, and backed with a 6 speed Caterham gearbox. It has previously served as my road car and competed in the UK Street racer series, before being turned into a full time race car and pressed into battle in the Centurion Challenge. I plan to race it in the 2014 750MC Sport Specials series so watch this space as I will add updates to the blog in due course.
Thanks to the Horrell Motors mechanics and riding shotgun in their Camaros to Chelsea Cruise in the 1980s, as well as growing up in Eastcote where both Street Machine and Performance Car magazines were based, I have always had a huge interest in muscle cars and hot rods. I was always destined to own some V8 muscle, and my first yank was a cheapo Pontiac Grand Prix from 1979, with a 305. Having drifted it to its death on Maidstone Police skid pan, my next yank was a 425ci 1965 Buick Riviera which was previously owned by Budgie, the drummer from Siouxie and the Banshees. Unfortunately the body was not in top shape so I sold the Buick and a mk2 Ford Escort RS2000 I was running (with the compulsory 2.1 litre motor and twin Weber DCOEs) and replaced them both with a very well modified 1993 Camaro Z28, with a 400bhp LT1, 6-speed manual, loud Flowmasters and well sorted track day suspension. The exhausts sounded so good that it Sega Rally recorded it for their V8 sound effects. Having added a 150 shot of nitrous, I campaigned this in the UK Street Series running low 12s, but it was at it's best on a smooth race track. After the Camaro, I ran a Corvette Z06 bought new in 2006, with a fabulous 7 litre LS7 motor. This is simply an awesome machine, the road going homologation for the most successful GT race car of the 2000s, (Corvettes recorded 5 wins at Le Mans, numerous national series wins and are still competitive enough to be the current 2013 ADAC GT3 Champion).
With the Z06 I finished 4th overall in the 2007 UK Street racer Series, recording a best of 11.7s @ 125mph; the car also featured in EVO magazine's "Fast Club" test in March 2006. With only 200 miles on the clock, it wasn't fully run in when John Barker figured it for them, and when I managed to get it to Bruntingthorpe in 2008 for American Car Worlds "Fuel Crisis" article I bettered their time and recorded 3.8 seconds 0-60mph and 8.1 seconds for 0-100mph. The most impressive trick was it's ability to sip fuel - on one 400 mile round trip it averaged an astonishing 40mpg.
The Z06 has now sadly departed, but my fleet is still all RWD - a lowered, but otherwise original MX5 mk1 in BRG with Rays rims & a lovely Nardi wheel providing day to day low speed RWD thrills, with the Sylva Fury waiting to be prepared for 2014. My own design, the Veeteor LSR still lurks in the workshop awaiting final touches and no doubt I will blog on progress with that in due course. Completing the fleet is a 1981 Zip Komet K88 100cc rotary valve kart which I must get onto a track in 2014!
As for my background as a motoring hack most recently I wrote and edited Circuits magazine and Motor Sport Circuit Guide website in 2010; there I researched the worlds racing circuits and interviewed around 30 owners and CEOs of racing circuits which was a fascinating education.
In the 200s I spent the best part of a decade as a staff writer for specialist titles such as Street Machine and American Car World magazines, and was contributing editor for the excellent Sylva Sportscar Registers club mag, The Dwindling Dot. My earliest experience with motorsport magazines was through Cobra, the seminal Brabham F1 supporters club magazine, written and published pre-internet on a photocopier by some teenage friends and neighbours in the 1980s, to whom I proudly donated my treasured Skid Solo cartoon strips which they transformed into the notorious "Skid Mark". Fabulous memories!
With Rear Wheel Drive I hope to combine some of this passion and my strange personal tastes in silly motors while also sharing the latest news, events, and information for discerning RWD enthusiasts.
Feel free to drop me a line and tell me about your own RWD infection, and be sure to include pictures!
Cheers for now
The Editor
[email protected]
I passed my driving test first time aged 17 and a couple of months, and promised myself that I should only ever own and drive Rear Wheel Drive cars, a mantra I have held onto ever since. My first car was a Triumph Spitfire that my dad bought for me aged 13, which we sadly never got to drive as the chassis was rotten! I bought another one when I was 16, but the first car I owned having passed my test was a Ford Capri mk2 1.6S, which I bought from a neighbour for 500 quid. A 1968 Triumph Vitesse Mk1 hardtop followed the Capri, which its creamy straight 6, lovely Michelotti body, tight turning circle, and snap oversteer. At 18 I bought a Ford Cortina mk1, complete with Rover V8, cherry bombs, flip front, full cage, cobra buckets, and Jag mk2 axle, with a welded up diff for smoky burnouts.
After my obsession with British Sports Cars I got into kit cars, thanks to a neighbour's boyfriend who had a gorgeous sounding Dutton B Plus, with a Vitesse straight Six on open Copper exhaust pipes that you could hear over a mile away. He replaced the Dutton with a 1700 X Flow powered Sylva Leader, which I eventually bought from him. While I had been to Santa Pod with the Cortina, the Sylva was the car in which I took my first motorsport steps, getting to the final of the 1993 Cars and Car Conversions magazine Converted Car of the Year competition, which was held at Curborough sprint course in the Midlands. While I have always been a fan of Caterhams (and still am) I love the Sylva marque and how it's founder Jeremy Phillips never copies, but always comes up with original, simple and effective designs. Indeed, Caterham are said to have started their now very well established one make series because they got so fed up with being beaten by these pesky Sylva Phoenix Clubmans in the national kit car championships!
While the Leader, based on Viva double wishbone suspension and associated underpinnings, was a superb handling car, it wasn't the prettiest looking thing and it was when I took the Leader to a CCC Castle Combe track day that I fell in love with the beautiful shape of the Sylva Fury and knew I had to have one and fulfilled that dream in 1996. I still own my Fury, which is powered by a stout Cosworth XE red top, and backed with a 6 speed Caterham gearbox. It has previously served as my road car and competed in the UK Street racer series, before being turned into a full time race car and pressed into battle in the Centurion Challenge. I plan to race it in the 2014 750MC Sport Specials series so watch this space as I will add updates to the blog in due course.
Thanks to the Horrell Motors mechanics and riding shotgun in their Camaros to Chelsea Cruise in the 1980s, as well as growing up in Eastcote where both Street Machine and Performance Car magazines were based, I have always had a huge interest in muscle cars and hot rods. I was always destined to own some V8 muscle, and my first yank was a cheapo Pontiac Grand Prix from 1979, with a 305. Having drifted it to its death on Maidstone Police skid pan, my next yank was a 425ci 1965 Buick Riviera which was previously owned by Budgie, the drummer from Siouxie and the Banshees. Unfortunately the body was not in top shape so I sold the Buick and a mk2 Ford Escort RS2000 I was running (with the compulsory 2.1 litre motor and twin Weber DCOEs) and replaced them both with a very well modified 1993 Camaro Z28, with a 400bhp LT1, 6-speed manual, loud Flowmasters and well sorted track day suspension. The exhausts sounded so good that it Sega Rally recorded it for their V8 sound effects. Having added a 150 shot of nitrous, I campaigned this in the UK Street Series running low 12s, but it was at it's best on a smooth race track. After the Camaro, I ran a Corvette Z06 bought new in 2006, with a fabulous 7 litre LS7 motor. This is simply an awesome machine, the road going homologation for the most successful GT race car of the 2000s, (Corvettes recorded 5 wins at Le Mans, numerous national series wins and are still competitive enough to be the current 2013 ADAC GT3 Champion).
With the Z06 I finished 4th overall in the 2007 UK Street racer Series, recording a best of 11.7s @ 125mph; the car also featured in EVO magazine's "Fast Club" test in March 2006. With only 200 miles on the clock, it wasn't fully run in when John Barker figured it for them, and when I managed to get it to Bruntingthorpe in 2008 for American Car Worlds "Fuel Crisis" article I bettered their time and recorded 3.8 seconds 0-60mph and 8.1 seconds for 0-100mph. The most impressive trick was it's ability to sip fuel - on one 400 mile round trip it averaged an astonishing 40mpg.
The Z06 has now sadly departed, but my fleet is still all RWD - a lowered, but otherwise original MX5 mk1 in BRG with Rays rims & a lovely Nardi wheel providing day to day low speed RWD thrills, with the Sylva Fury waiting to be prepared for 2014. My own design, the Veeteor LSR still lurks in the workshop awaiting final touches and no doubt I will blog on progress with that in due course. Completing the fleet is a 1981 Zip Komet K88 100cc rotary valve kart which I must get onto a track in 2014!
As for my background as a motoring hack most recently I wrote and edited Circuits magazine and Motor Sport Circuit Guide website in 2010; there I researched the worlds racing circuits and interviewed around 30 owners and CEOs of racing circuits which was a fascinating education.
In the 200s I spent the best part of a decade as a staff writer for specialist titles such as Street Machine and American Car World magazines, and was contributing editor for the excellent Sylva Sportscar Registers club mag, The Dwindling Dot. My earliest experience with motorsport magazines was through Cobra, the seminal Brabham F1 supporters club magazine, written and published pre-internet on a photocopier by some teenage friends and neighbours in the 1980s, to whom I proudly donated my treasured Skid Solo cartoon strips which they transformed into the notorious "Skid Mark". Fabulous memories!
With Rear Wheel Drive I hope to combine some of this passion and my strange personal tastes in silly motors while also sharing the latest news, events, and information for discerning RWD enthusiasts.
Feel free to drop me a line and tell me about your own RWD infection, and be sure to include pictures!
Cheers for now
The Editor
[email protected]
RSS Feed