Octane meets the hot rodder and inveterate car-builder who made his name creating Ford-sanctioned GT40 replicas
Words Richard Heseltine Portraits Jonathan Fleetwood
THE OCTANE INTERVIEW
YOUR BRAIN works hard to make sense of it, even if there is little sense to be found. So it’s a trike with a V8 sited behind the driver, and one that will be road-registered but will also be used for speed record attempts. Of course. Naturally. Next to it is a GT40 clone, still in the throes of creation. The Le Mans-conquering Ford has been a constant thread through our genial host’s life for decades, as have hot rods. And with that, his Model A pick-up burbles into view, this ‘Covid project’ having been built during the various lockdowns at the start of the decade as a means of alleviating boredom.
Somehow, a bungalow in rural Dorset and its environs scream ‘retirement dwelling’ rather than a hotbed of car-building, but Ray Christropher doesn’t see it that way. ‘What else am I going to do?’ he counters. ‘I’ve been making cars since I was a teenager. Apart from my own stuff, there have been builds for other people. The trike is one. That started with a conversation in the pub down the road. Actually, thinking about it, most of my projects over the years started with a chat over a pint. The point is, I am 83. I am still fit and my mind hasn’t turned to mush, so I have no intention of stopping.’
On retreating to the back of his workshop, ‘The Rodfather’ is all smiles as he replays the slide-show version of his life story before an audience of one. He does so while stopping repeatedly to ask: ‘Are you sure you want to hear about this?’ Conversation takes in characters as diverse as racing baronet Sir John Whitmore and grappler Mick ‘The Dulwich Destroyer’ McManus, each yarn peppered with self-deprecation. ‘I was born in 1940 in Bournemouth and I struggled at school because I am dyslexic,’ he says. ‘People thought I was thick. Actually, they used a word you don’t say any more, but I underwent various tests and it turned out that I had an IQ of 146.
‘The point of me mentioning that is that my dad was quite a tough character, but a caring one. He told me that I had the brains to do whatever I wanted in life. What I really wanted to do was race cars. I fell in love with motorsport after my older brothers took me to Goodwood. I had a motorcycle in my teens and dad was sure I was going to kill myself so he bought me an Austin Seven. That was in the mid-1950s. I then stripped it a
