Be Like John

A few years ago, we had the wonderful opportunity to sit down with 80-year-old John, a man with a wealth of memories to share and an infectious passion for cars. Oh, he also still owned and drove his Ferrari F40! John is sadly no longer with us, but his memory and stories live on to inspire us all, so below, let's revisit that chat below.

If I asked where you see yourself when you're 80 years old, have a think about what you might say. You might tell me all the goals you want to have achieved throughout your life, or see yourself spending time with your grandkids and feeding them extra sweets behind their parents' back, but I'm not sure you'd tell me you see yourself driving your Ferrari F40. Well, SCD member John does exactly that, and in fact he was nearly 70 when he bought the car, so it's never too late to start!

Such a man must have stories to tell, so let's start off by winding the clock back and finding out how he took his first step on the automotive ladder. "I actually started rallying first. I started learning to drive while I was still at school, on the school grounds in my father's car. After I left school, I passed my test and borrowed my mother's car which was a Standard Pennant, a horrible looking square box of a car by today's reckoning. One particular night I remember going out and getting the car absolutely filthy with mud, hosing it down after, giving it back to her on Monday morning and trying to remember to put some petrol in it because she needed it on Monday to go shopping", John laughs.

"After that, I had a TR2. I had two crashes in that; one was in a shop front and the other was hitting a three-wheeler who cut across in front of me, so I then got relegated down to a Morris 1000 and I think I rallied that a little bit, then I went up to a Triumph Herald Coupe with a rally lamp on the top and spotlights, and I won the Dukeries Rally. In the second year, it became a national rally, and Roger Clark won it for the next two or three years after that.

"Racing followed rallying. I think I decided it was such a waste of time being in the middle of Derbyshire, getting lost and spending an hour and a half digging ourselves out of a farmer's track with ice on it. There was a lot more acknowledgement by going on a race track with thousands of people watching you and a lot less effort, so I turned from rallying to racing.

"The first racing car I had was a Sprite which we built up from scratch. It was a chassis, an old body and we put a new fibreglass bonnet on it — it looked horribly ugly! Following on from that, I upgraded to a proper Sebring Sprite which was a beautiful car with an aluminium sloping back on it and an all-aluminium body. I actually acquired it from Frank Williams, or should I say Sir Frank Williams. He went to the same garage as me and the same mechanics repaired and upgraded his engine.

"It was all laid on that I was going to go to Brands Hatch at the crack of sparrows in the morning. I turned up at the proper time and there was no Frank and no car. It turned out afterwards that a friend of mine had financed the car and Frank couldn't pay the finance, so my friend took the car into his possession and I then bought the car. I think I have some figures somewhere and the car cost me £482 and 10 Shillings back in old money. I campaigned that for a couple of years with some reasonable success. If I finished, it was usually on the podium with the odd lap record or the odd class record and that was about it. I got married soon after then, so needs must and the car had to go", John explains.

Roll the clock on 20 years or so later and John was back in the racing game with a BMW 3.0 CSL. "In its class, we have notes and lap times to say it was probably the fastest CSL in the country at the time. I actually sold that because the regulations changed and they wanted me to put a full roll cage in instead of a half roll cage and I thought it would spoil the car because, to me, it was a nice standard car", he remembers.

Let's wind the clock on a little further to the reason we're here today. How did the F40 come to be and when did John find out about SCD? "I bought the F40 in 2009 and I've been a member of Supercar Driver since 2012. I believe the F40 was the first one SCD had within their membership, and it's particularly exciting for Jonty and Adam as I know it's up there with their favourite cars.

"I think the reason I bought my F40 was actually my son, who suggested, Why be miserable Dad, losing money in all those stocks and shares when you could have that money in a nice classic car you could look at and actually drive?", and that's just what I did. John tells us.

"The F40 came to mind against F50 and some others. We looked around and decided on the F40 between us, turned down a few cars as they were too low mileage and too expensive as ! wanted a car to drive. This particular car came up at Graypaul Nottingham, our local Ferrari dealer, so we went to look at it and agreed to buy it.

"Graypaul also had an F50 in at that time which we did consider. They were a similar price with the F50 up for fractionally more, stretching the budget a little bit. I thought the F50 looked a little bit bulbous in comparison and the F40 was iconic, it was a name which had always rung true with me, so I went for the F40. I remember the day I first saw one, probably at Silverstone when it was first launched, I saw it in the paddock with the vented back window and thought wow, what a car. I never thought that 20 years later I would own one.

"In hindsight, the F50 has appreciated more and they're a rarer car, although I think people forget that half of the F40s went to America to start with, and I still think the F40 is more iconic, as proved by a recent episode of Top Gear where Chris Harris was raving about it, saying it's absolutely the best car in the world.

"I believe they made 1,385 F40s. Approximately half went to America and I think the UK had an allocation of maybe something less than 100, so this is one of those cars plus the provenance of the first owner being Sir Anthony Bamford with the logbook to prove it”.

With the deal done, new car day is always exciting for any car enthusiast, but collecting your F40 must be unforgettable, so we ask John to recall the experience. "I took delivery of the car at Silverstone and I had never driven an F40 before. We did five or six laps and then it started coughing and spluttering. Unfortunately one of the banks went down and it had to be transported back for repairs, obviously under warranty", John tells us.

So that's not quite the start you'd expect, but John and other drivers on the day were still taken with the F40 as so many of us are. "I did have a couple of comments from other Ferrari drivers at the time saying good on you for using this sort of car on track. One said he just lost sight of it down the straight because it's so quick, but not so quick around the corners because obviously it was a new car to me, the tyres were cold and I had to get used to it. I've never been on a track day in it since because I think they're just too expensive for track days. You can have a lot of fun on a track day in a cheap car.

"I went to the 25th anniversary of the F40 at Silverstone and spoke to one of the Cottingham brothers from DK Engineering. He looked at the car and said, "You haven't driven that here have you?", I said, "Yeah..., and he said, 'Oh you shouldn't drive it on the road, it's sacrilege, it has such low mileage!", but cars are made to be driven aren't they?". John explains.

"That did make me stop and think though, and I went out and bought a 16M. I thought if I was treating the F40 as more of an investment, I'll buy a car I can use, but I've still got the F40 and that's the main thing, and hopefully for many more years to come", he smiles.

"It's such an iconic car, and just to look at it makes the hairs on the back of your neck stand up. It's really something and there will never be another car like it. It's a race car for the road. Enzo wanted to have the fastest car on the road because they thought F1 had gone a bit soft at that time, they were losing races and they wanted to get back and prove they could produce the fastest car in the world, and it was the first road car to reach 200mph”.

And what about John's particular car? "It is a non-adjust car with a Tubi exhaust. I've had the cats taken off it and it has the Nick Mason vents on the back screen for extra ventilation and visibility", he explains, "All I can say is that it's a bit of a Jekyll and Hyde. You drive it when it's cold and it's an absolute pig. The gear change, the steering, everything about it. Get it warmed up and it's a totally different animal”.

Despite the halo car we're here to talk about, we always like talking about car history and know that John has owned a few other interesting cars, so we ask him to recall a few and the stories that go along with them. "Myself and my son tend to share cars between us, I think we've had about 14 or 15 Ferraris in total, and I started off with a 550. More recently we've diversified a little bit and had a few Lamborghinis; my son still has a Murcielago SV which is for sale. We've had Aventadors which are fabulous looking cars and quite nice to drive, but they're so big and wide. We had a Huracan as I had to have one to buy the Aventador SV, and in hindsight, the Huracan is a much more manageable car like a Ferrari 458 or 430.

"Then there's the McLaren 675LT; it's a limited edition car and we had some nice stripes put onto it which most people seem to appreciate as they brighten it up a little bit. We did actually go to an airfield event with Supercar Driver going head-to-head with different types of cars. I didn't actually compete because unfortunately, due to miscommunication, there was another 675LT there that day, but nevertheless, I went along and had a blast down the runway at 166mph two up. That was the first time I had ever used launch control which is just another thing in something like a 675LT-I've never known anything like it for acceleration!", John exclaims.

"I was privileged to buy a 599 GTO when they first came out, and we got it literally days before flying off to enter it in the Mille Miglia. That was an event I'll remember for years to come. It was the Ferrari tribute to the Mille Miglia and I've never known anything like it. You feel like royalty with police escorts down the streets and through major junctions, speed limits don't matter, through red lights. It's absolutely another world, everybody shouting, 'Gas, gas gas!", at the side of the road. You almost felt untouchable, it was a real special occasion and truly unforgettable".

Going back to the F40 again, there must be a few memories attached to that car? "As mentioned, I went to the 25th anniversary of the launch of the F40 at Silverstone where there were about 65 F40s in one big convoy. I went to the Supercar Driver meet with the Red Arrows at RAF Scampton which was a lovely day out and something different with a bit of a run down the runway, but I limited it because the stones chipping the paintwork just wasn't worth going too fast. I've done a few other events with it, to my mind not enough, but they're all memories".

Most of us would consider an F40 as irreplaceable, so we ask John if it's a keeper or if anything could tempt him out of it. "As an investment and as a car to look at, whether you drive it or not, a car I do keep wondering about, although it might be too late for anything much more now, I do think a Porsche 918 would be a nice car to have. It's not got the character, it's not an icon and never will be like the F40, but it could be a car for the summertime to take the roof off, something more modern, easier to drive and therefore you'd use it a lot more, but I'm not doing that much driving and have other cars for summertime, so I'll be hanging onto it for the moment.

"In fact, Graypaul have asked me more than once if I want to sell it, so I said, "Why? Have you got a customer for it?", and they said, 'No, but you couldn't find a better one than this", John proudly tells us.

"Anyone out there who owns an F40, get out and drive it, join Supercar Driver, go to the events they provide. That's what they're there for and that's what you're going to enjoy. It's not like just having an investment sat in the garage, you want to enjoy your cars".