The Classics you love, drive and restore
‘Our beloved Italian Job event has become much more than just a silly idea’
My cherished classic is a white left-hand drive Innocenti, made under licence at the Lambretta factory in Milan because it was cheaper for them to send the tooling over there to produce cars for the European market. It had been converted to right-hand drive at some point in its life, so we had it converted back. It features some little differences that you might notice – the positioning of the front lights and the aluminium door trims for example.
I’m one of the organisers of the Italian Job fundraising event, which I’ve been involved in from the very beginning in 1990. It started as just a silly idea between friends, but it gathered momentum. The first year we ended up with 55 cars and raised £70,000, which was amazing, then we just carried on doing it every year – except for the past few years. But we're back in 2023, and looking to grow the over £3m that we’ve raised so far. We’ve always supported children’s charities, and at the moment we support Buttle, a grant-giving charity for young people in the UK.
We go to the rooftop test track in Turin that was featured in the film, the old villa and one of the main piazzas, and we visit a few F1 circuits, but we change the route every year and try to pepper it with interesting food and wine and places to visit. We try to make it a real Tourist Trophy event, following a little road book through Europe that we devise.
People can come in any car that was in the film, and BMW Minis come along too. John Cooper loved our event and was a massive supporter, and I love to see his name on the newer Minis as well as the old ones.
‘It flies up hills now’
This car dates from the first year when Midgets had the 1275cc engine, but when I bought it, someone had fitted a 1098cc engine. Not long ago I came across a 1275cc engine that we stripped down and completely rebuilt – so it’s now a high-compression unit with steel crank and rods, Omega pistons, high-torque cam and skimmed head… Paul Gardner Racing Engines did all the machining work on it. It’s done about 1000 miles with this engine, and it’s going really well! It absolutely flies up hills now.
I used to have a garage business, and this belonged to one of my customers. It had been laid up for years in a concrete garage that was about to fall on it, but all that was wrong with it was the fuel pump. I’ve also got a TR6, an Escort RS2000, a Peugeot 304 convertible, an MGB that I’ve just restored with a Sebring conversion, while my wife has a very early
