So, while travelling back from Anglesey through mountainous mid-Wales Kate and I got chatting about my racing ambitions. This culminated in a statement along the lines of, “If it’s the last thing on your ‘things to do before I’m 30 list,’ you have to do it!” It was and the encouragement was enough to give me the final push I needed.
On returning home I put the Striker up for sale. It was a short but pleasurable period of ownership. The low-point was when the accessory belt snapped one evening and I had to send Kate into M&S to buy tights to get the thing back to shelter; at least I have a tale to tell. Anyway, I priced the car at a level where I knew it would sell. I couldn’t afford to wait very long. Two guys from the Southampton area bought it (they’ve since sold it again) and, aside from them costing me a whole day’s work waiting for them to collect, the transaction went smoothly.
But what now? What was I going to race in? In my mind there were three options. I was certain that I wanted to race a kit car but I could do this in the 750MC Locost Championship, the 750MC RGB Championship or the WRDA Welsh Saloons and Sports Cars. The deciding factor in the end was cost, or ‘financial exposure.’ Given my work situation, I wanted to have as little funds tied-up in a car as possible. So, I looked around. There wasn’t a proven RGB car or WSSC-suited racer available for less than £7500 but there were three Locosts advertised between £4000 and £5200. My decision was made. One of the cars was less than an hour from home so I went to see Steve Kirby one evening. I’ve seen plenty of club-level racers and this one was in fantastic cosmetic order. I sat in the car and started it. I was pretty sold on it but decided that I should see another car. I spoke to someone I respected, Matt at http://www.procomp.co.uk/ and he informed me that a good friend of his, Dave Black was nearing completion of a rebuild of his old car to then sell. I spoke to Dave and the price was okay but, rightly or wrongly, the fact that it wasn’t ready and didn’t include a transponder was enough for me to look elsewhere. So, the following Saturday I travelled to Silverstone to see the cheapest of the three cars. Tony Jones had completed four races in 2007 and the car had sat idle since. It was the polar opposite of the first car in terms of appearance but it came with a huge amount of spares, including replacement bodywork.
On returning home I put the Striker up for sale. It was a short but pleasurable period of ownership. The low-point was when the accessory belt snapped one evening and I had to send Kate into M&S to buy tights to get the thing back to shelter; at least I have a tale to tell. Anyway, I priced the car at a level where I knew it would sell. I couldn’t afford to wait very long. Two guys from the Southampton area bought it (they’ve since sold it again) and, aside from them costing me a whole day’s work waiting for them to collect, the transaction went smoothly.
But what now? What was I going to race in? In my mind there were three options. I was certain that I wanted to race a kit car but I could do this in the 750MC Locost Championship, the 750MC RGB Championship or the WRDA Welsh Saloons and Sports Cars. The deciding factor in the end was cost, or ‘financial exposure.’ Given my work situation, I wanted to have as little funds tied-up in a car as possible. So, I looked around. There wasn’t a proven RGB car or WSSC-suited racer available for less than £7500 but there were three Locosts advertised between £4000 and £5200. My decision was made. One of the cars was less than an hour from home so I went to see Steve Kirby one evening. I’ve seen plenty of club-level racers and this one was in fantastic cosmetic order. I sat in the car and started it. I was pretty sold on it but decided that I should see another car. I spoke to someone I respected, Matt at http://www.procomp.co.uk/ and he informed me that a good friend of his, Dave Black was nearing completion of a rebuild of his old car to then sell. I spoke to Dave and the price was okay but, rightly or wrongly, the fact that it wasn’t ready and didn’t include a transponder was enough for me to look elsewhere. So, the following Saturday I travelled to Silverstone to see the cheapest of the three cars. Tony Jones had completed four races in 2007 and the car had sat idle since. It was the polar opposite of the first car in terms of appearance but it came with a huge amount of spares, including replacement bodywork.
The car had some good points though. The chassis appeared to be from Stuart Taylor which was good. The (primary) wheels were the excellent Compomotive CXRs and the harness was a very nice (read expensive) Schroth one. I chatted to Tony and while it was clear that he could drive a bit, the car had never been outside the top-ten in his ownership. I made a ridiculously low offer and, to my amazement, Tony accepted. This was great in that I had a car but, as much of the bodywork appeared to be held together with filler I knew that I had work to do.
TC
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