Magazine
What It's Like to Own a 2,000hp Rimac Nevera
Say hello to the first EV ever to receive a member feature in Supercar Driver magazine...
September 8, 2026
Behind the scenes of a member's eclectic collection, ranging from classics to supercars and vintage race cars, and the one he still yearns for.
Like most kids, I loved cars from the days of Dinky, Corgi, and Matchbox. I was lucky enough to con my way into ‘working’ for a Le Mans Series team at a race in the 1960s when I was 14. During the practice week, I swept up in the pits and polished the Dino 206SP that would be racing. It was a magical race with that 2-litre car beating all bar one of the 5-litre cars it was up against. These days were my early lessons in racing.
I don't so much look for supercars. I rather look for cars that are unique in some way and have some connection to my life. Cars I’ve had posters of, or that represent the modern equivalent of cars that I used to read about or see in movies. That initial experience with a Ferrari as a kid, and the sound, has stuck with me over the years.
This is an oddity. My wife has always loved Astons, and she convinced me to get one for myself, betting that I wouldn’t like it as a driver’s car and would hand it over. She was right. It’s a brilliant design and a quick car, but a bit like a wallowing hippo on B roads.
To be fair, the core thing both my wife and the Aston Martin Head of Business said over and over, is that everyone loves Astons, and when I was driving it, one thing stood out: In any other supercar, there’s about a half and half split between people who give a thumbs up, and people who look at the car in disgust. But no matter where I went, people really loved the Aston. I assume this is British pride across every demographic, and I do love that.
The epitome of American muscle and style. My daughter and I had plans for years to restore one, but life got in the way, so when I got the chance to get a C2 Coupe in black with the biggest engine, I bought it and had it gone through. The V8 has a mega sound which shakes the ground, and it’s a scary ride — I had to upgrade the brakes after the first outing! It’s a fun Cars and Coffee car and car show favourite.
One of my wife’s cars that I like driving. We both loved the style of the 360, 430 and 458 series, and the fact that the 458 was the last of the naturally-aspirated V8 line, so I was decided on a 458. It is a future classic, and in my mind, the best of the recent Ferraris from a design point of view. I love the rounded look, and it isn’t overdone with aerodynamic features like fins, blades and squared edges. My first Ferrari was a Dino 206, which was just gorgeous to look at as well. Slow as hell, but great looking.
Anyway, my wife said no! She wanted a more modern car, so we got the F8 instead. I still have an itch for a 458 and will add one when I work out where to store it, but the F8 is a nice interim placeholder and is drivable every day.
I have to admit that the Comp and the Comp A are anomalies for me. I wanted a Ferrari that would, at worst, hold its value, would give me an Italian thrill in driving, but could go a distance. I hunted around and pressured a friend in the industry to find something with a V12 sound and performance that also looked special. You have to think of this in the context of me treating my cars as my artwork – not for value but for sheer enjoyment.
My friend’s reps identified the 812 Comp as fitting the spec, and knew of two of them that they had sold to their first owners. But they were totally different Comps. One was an Atelier coupe in a great colour (yellow) that had already done almost 5k miles, so I could put on miles and not worry about it dropping too much in value.
The other one was a really mind-blowing Tailor Made Aperta in a Milky Orange base with custom touches that made it one of one. As it had fewer than 60 miles, they pointed out that I shouldn’t think of putting any miles on the Aperta, as it was truly a great investment car.
Which did I want to go and fight to buy from the owners? I decided on both! They are really special to look at, and I could drive the yellow one on tours and trips without worrying. After some negotiating, I ended up buying both (I think the owners are also members of Supercar Driver).
After a couple of comments remarking on the Orange Comp A, I did some digging, and it seems that the Comp A is even rarer than I thought. Records indicate that there have been very few orange Ferraris of any hue and only a handful in Milky Orange. I’m not sure how accurate that is, but I haven’t yet found any Ferrari owners who have ever seen one, and the colour is magnificent, especially under the lights in the garage and in sunlight.
Well, an E-Type is about as iconic a British ‘60s and ‘70s sports car as you could ever get. As a teenager, TV and movies were the stimulants for ultimate sports cars. I’ve always loved the designs of both the coupe and the OTS. When I got offered a ‘fully restored’ V12 Series 3, I jumped at it. As often happens, lots of issues were hidden, and it's taken two years to get things close to original. It’s a wonderful car to take to the pub on a sunny afternoon.
I have an F-Type SVR Coupe which I consider one of the best cars I own. It has great style, it looks like a supercar should, and it performs like one, plus the sound is wonderful. So when the opportunity came up for me to buy the Project 7, I didn’t hesitate. In launch Goodwood Blue, it is really special. The soft top roof is a joke, and not something you put up when it has started drizzling — that’s too late! It would take five minutes of faffing around as you get wet.
However, the designer of the Project 7, Cesar Pieri, has become a friend, and I’ve learned a lot about the evolution and the design. The car gets great looks; people seem to crowd around it and take lots of pictures at car shows, even over Ferraris and McLarens. It drives relatively well, but isn’t quite as nimble as the SVR, even though it is built on the same chassis (albeit rear-wheel drive) and engine.
The GT3 is a great track car. And it's supposed to be a reasonable road car. I bought it because I loved the look in red and always wanted a mean-looking and sounding Porsche. It fits the bill. It also appeals to the purist in me as a normally aspirated rocket. Sadly, the road experience isn’t pleasant enough for me to want to use it regularly, so I have stuck to using it as a track car.
I used to race during the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, and the GT3 gives me the consistent thrill I need on track days, however, I realised how far I am from my racing days when I handed it over to one of the drivers of my race team — Jan Magnussen. The GT3 is FAST. And scary for passengers. It’s a keeper and more than enough for me. At the Secret Meet, Jan took a group of friends of mine around Silverstone, and he seemed to exceed the specs of the car. When he came into the pit lane to swap passengers, the centre caps on the wheels literally blew off from the heat, and they said it had been the best passenger ride they’d ever had.
Once I realised the road limitations of the GT3, I looked for a Porsche that I could use year-round, that had all of the comforts. Following advice, I bought a 992 Carrera 4 GTS. It did everything perfectly. All-wheel drive for the wet, cold or icy days, a great tourer (I used it to drive to Spa for some races), but it didn’t have soul, it didn't have the ‘edge’ I wanted. So I decided to swap it out for a 992 Turbo S. That made the difference. It does everything really well, but has the devil in it – if you aren’t careful, it can really hurt you, so you have to remain engaged. Hooning in ‘Mexico’ in it gives me what the GT3 and the GTS were missing on the road. It is a real wolf in sheep’s clothing — the proportions of the 992 belie the magic.
Now we’re into the really special cars in my life. When I swept up around the 206SP at the 9-hour Le Mans series race, there were a couple of T70 MK3Bs in the pits next to us. The cars were pure porn to a 14-year-old; they were in the back of my mind for all of my life, and I would look at photos in magazines and in newspapers. But my first love was the 206SP. I kept on trying to buy one as I got older, and every time I thought I could stretch and afford the next one that came on the market (there were only 18 ever made), the price had moved beyond my reach.
Eventually, as I got to retirement age, I gave up temporarily on the Dino and decided to go after the T70. My wife (bless her) managed to contact Eric Broadley’s company (the founder of Lola, which had been in and out of bankruptcy a number of times), and although he was ill, his partner agreed to locate one for me. However, by this time, I recognised that I was too old and out of racing shape to be racing a T70, and so I asked them to convert whatever car they found to be a road-legal car here in the UK.
They located a car that had been crashed in the ‘70s, rebuilt, crashed again, etc, and that retained almost no decent original parts, most of which had been grabbed by other racers in the early '70s to be used on other cars to save money. Most real historic race cars are like Trigger’s broom – cars crash and wear out, and almost every part gets replaced. However, the chassis they’d located (which wasn’t original either – it had been rebuilt after one of the crashes) did have the original invoice (£6,750!), a factory original serial number plate, and it matched the factory records.
Unfortunately, in original race trim, it was undrivable. It turns out race cars don't like to idle around town at 30 mph, or go over traffic calming bumps, or driveways! But the DVLA would not allow it to be registered as a road car in anything but the original spec — vicious circle. So the period-correct original spec race car was presented to the DVLA (around Covid time), and after a few months, it was given an original 1969 reg. Then, Broadley’s partner and staff set about making it drivable on the road, but four years later, it still wasn’t reliable. The furthest I had successfully driven it was less than half a mile before my wife had to bring the trailer and recover me.
One of the nine cars that Frank Sbarro had built with Broadley as road cars (of which most were so bad they were converted back to race cars) later came up for auction, and I bought it so I could have an actual original T70 road car that was sort of reliable, and I started to drive that around. Then, the Broadley car finally started working, so I had two road cars.
In true stupid old man mode, I decided to convert the Sbarro car to be a race car, and to campaign it in the Masters Historic Racing series, because the Broadley car was now running much better than the Sbarro car. That’s when we discovered that Sbarro had stretched the chassis to accommodate air conditioning and made other chassis changes to give a better ride. After nine months of wasted effort, I reversed course and had the team convert the road car back to race spec, and make the Sbarro car with the better road equipment my road car.
In the end, it worked out. In our first year (2025) as a race team, we came second overall at the Le Mans Classic, and third overall in the Peter Auto Championship.
Man maths at work! I’ve always loved the look of the GTP and Group C cars. When I was racing in the ‘80s and ‘90s, the Nissan GTP cars were dominating in IMSA and in Le Mans. I loved the look, but it’s clearly a lot of work to keep them running. However, I watched an ’86 Tiga that had the same look win its class at Le Mans in 2023, and it is relatively easy to get spares and to keep them running through a season. So, with the logic that two cars on a transporter at a race weekend would make sure that the weekend wouldn’t be wasted, I bought it. We have a number of P1 trophies this year, so it helped with our first-year success rate, and it really looks and sounds great.
I joined just before summer in 2024 after I saw something mentioning the Secret Meet, and I had a couple of friends talking about it as well, so I tracked down the club and applied. The Secret Meet has given by far my best memories as it gave me a bit of everything. Community, relationships and track time with great people who respect the cars and the relative skills of their drivers.
I like being involved for the knowledgeable, friendly, respectful and really funny discussions in the WhatsApp Community, and the people I have met in person too. I really want to do a European tour, if I can get my wife to come along!
I’m looking for a McLaren 720S to round out the collection, and one day a fairly priced Dino 206S.
That original 206SP that started it all. Giorgio Perfetti has owned it since 1994, and I know he’ll never sell it. Oh well!
