Alex Michaelides: My Dad's MGC, Citroen XM, Formula Ford and Kit Car Company. S9E2

And it just felt like a bit of a downgrade, like it had wind-up windows and stuff like that. He also had an MGC, which he'd had since he was 21. But my mum drove the Mercedes, he had the Triumph. We slept in the boot of the Citron XM. My dad has always been a fairly spirited driver. And we bought the rights to a kit car, and that was such a rocket. That was incredible. I think from where he started to what he's achieved is pretty impressive.

Welcome to my dad's car. Enjoy.

Welcome to my dad's car. And you know what? It doesn't even have to be about your dad's car. It can be your mum, your grand, your dad, your dad, or even a neighbour. If it made an impression, let's talk about it. Hi Andy. How's it going? You alright? Yeah, good, thanks. How are you? I'm good. I'm very good. Thank you very much. Good, good. We'll just uh wait for John to join us.

Alright. Hi hi John, how you doing?

How's it going, Alex? Yeah, not too bad. Thanks. All good. All good. Thank you. Good stuff. You're looking streamlined, John. Have you lost the beard? Mate, I had a shave, yeah. The wife went away on Wednesday for two weeks of work. So I've taken the opportunity to um to go incognito and whip the beard off. Yeah. So basically my kids lost both their parents on the same day, I think.

Yeah, I I I've done that before when my uh when my son was like two years old, and you sort of walk into the room and they have they're genuinely quite scared of you.

Yeah, yeah. Definitely been looking at me in a different way. She's used to it now, but initially it was a bit of a shock, I think. Yeah. Yeah. Feels good though, I must admit.

I can eat properly and uh Yeah, I I need to have a bit of a a bit of a trim. I'm looking a bit like Mr. Twit at the moment.

Yeah, that's where I was I was in I was in the same place, Alex.

I occasionally go the other way and then walk downstairs with a ridiculous moustache.

I obviously did that as well. You know, I shaved it all and left the tash, which I thought was quite good. I thought it was quite sort of rivals-esque, but it has to be done, I think. Yeah, probably look more like Tosh out of the bill, being truthful.

That is the that's I know you would, Andy. Yeah, yeah. I just about remember that. We had a um years ago, we had I can't remember what it was, when I was uh a kid. We had the police round for some reason because somebody had stolen something and run down our road or something like that. And one of the policemen did genuinely look like Tosh from the Bill. Nice. It was uh I just thought that that's who they were, they were actual policemen.

Used to wear quite a nice long Mac, didn't he? Yeah, Tosh. Yeah. See if I can get myself one of those. Good idea.

Yeah. Okay, wonderful. We'll jump into it. For the benefit of the tape, we're joined by Alex Michaelides, who um we first met up at the NEC a couple of years ago um working alongside the guys at Iconic Auctioneers. Um, he was very helpful organising the interview we did with Nick Whale, and we had a bit of a chat while we were there. And um we said, yeah, let's get you on. So yeah, here we are. Alex, welcome along.

Thank you very much. Um really pleased to be here. This is, as you guys know, I'm a big old fan of this uh this podcast. I've been listening for years. So uh yeah, it's a real privilege to be on. Thank you.

And um, yeah, do you want to give kind of yeah, just a minute or two on what you get up to within the automotive sphere?

Yeah, sure. So um I've spent most of my career in PR and communications for the automotive industry. Um, I've worked at the SMMT, so the Trade Association for the UK motor industry, um, and several agencies. Um, so things that could be of interest to your listeners, um, I relaunched T VR back in the the mid-2010s. Wow. Yeah, it was. I mean, there's a few stories to tell on that. I don't know how many I'm actually allowed to tell from an NDA point of view. But um when the Russians got involved, no, it was after that. It was um it was the uh Les Edgar. So they worked with Gordon Murray designed to sort of develop this new TVR, which was going to be this incredible thing, and one thing led to another and it didn't quite happen. But the launch was fantastic. We did it at Goodwood Revival, and it was a you know a big press event at the at the time. So yeah, I've I I did that. I've worked for several weird and wonderful low-volume sports car manufacturers, um, sort of helped uh provide background support for Lotus in that sort of post-Dani Baja pre-jeerly phase of the company. Um, but most of the work that I've done is is B2B comms. So I work with automotive suppliers, aftermarket uh networks, etc. And along with my colleague Alex Druggins, um we started Virio in January 2025. So basically taking everything that we've learned from automotive and applying it across B2B sectors uh with media relations, social media, uh internal comms, and the benefit that our customers get is that we give them commercial results, so increased sales, customer attention, employee satisfaction, and stuff like that. Um and we also work with iconic auctioneers, which as you said is how we uh how we first met.

Absolutely. Yeah, I I had a thousand questions referenced to TBR, and that's absolutely off of a tangent already. I don't think they're I don't think they're going anymore, are they, TVR?

Um, I think technically they are. I think there's a um there was a plan hatched a couple of years ago to bring out an electric SUV to make the money and then but obviously, you know, that car that they um I think we launched that T VR prototype in 2016 or 2017. So it was a different world when it comes to trying to sell a car. Yeah, yeah. It's a real shame. Though they were they were great people and the car itself was fantastic, but obviously it takes a bit more than that these days to work.

There must be a massive thirst, like from a TVR enthusiast point of view, for them to still be doing stuff, mustn't there?

Yeah, I mean at the time I think they had 500 delivery slots and they were all filled. You know, they're taking deposits from real people, so yeah, um real shame.

Yeah. Okay. Um so yeah, we will jump in and ask you what's your earliest car memory?

Well, when we were at the NEC, you box popped me about this, and I gave you an answer, but I've been thinking about it in more detail, a bit different. So my earliest car memory, I think, is being in our garage at home and sitting in my dad's Formula Ford. He had a 1985 Delta. So Delta, I don't know if you know much about single-seater racing. Um, Delta was a company that was either run or founded by Patrick Head. Okay, of Williams. Of Williams, yeah. And so in the late 70s and early 80s, he was designing championship-winning F1 cars and Formula Fords.

Okay.

And my dad had one from 1985, which he raced probably in the late 80s before I was born, and then parked it up in our garage for about probably about 10 years.

Oh, okay.

But I just remember sitting in there being totally sort of cocooned by this thing. So obviously I was so so small, but I can still remember the smell of it and just the the gear shift and stuff like that was a a real sort of defining thing for me. Nice. So your dad, obviously a petrol head, Alex. Massive petrol head, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um, I mean, his his entire life really, well, any spare time he had has been sort of messing around with cars. So in the I think it must have been in the early 80s, he built and designed his own single seater. Wow. So there's a championship called Formula 750.

Yeah, yeah.

Which is what, you know, Colin Chapman and Gordon Murray all came through. Nice. And my dad, um, I think left school with aspirations to go and become an engineer and work for a car company or work in motorsport. But he didn't quite get the grades, and I think one thing led to another. But he did go to the open university and get a degree in racing car design, I think it was called, which was a course they did at the time. And yeah, so so he built and raced his own car for for a few years and then bought the formula Ford and raced that. But I mean, cars have just been a massive part of my life because of him.

Yeah.

So around that time of sort of being three or four, he had this Formula Ford, which sat in the garage doing nothing. But he also had an MGC, which he'd had since he was 21, which is um quite an interesting car in itself because it's a very unusual sort of unique edition of the of the um example of the mark, as they would say.

Is it basically six-cylinder MGB?

So, yeah, so the C is a six-cylinder MGB, so it's got a I think it's a Buick engine they put in it, um in the in the late 60s. His one is called a University Special. So there was a company called University Motors, which would basically take MGCs and vamp them up a bit. But it's one of two because it's in this really unusual colour called Florida Green, which I think used to be used to paint like where you'd have like a two-tone like Austin A40 or something. Okay. Paint the bottom of it this green and the top of it black. And he's got this MGC in this, yeah, really incredible colour. So yeah, he had that. Uh my mum had an MGB, which was then being restored at that kind of time. And he also bought a Ferrari 308 GT4 when I was about five.

Oh wow, okay.

And so, I mean, that was basically my path set. I was always going to do something with cars because it just became my childhood, really.

What was his sort of, I guess, like school run, run around sort of thing, or pop to the shops run around?

Uh so when I was about that age, we had two everyday cars. The idea was that his everyday car was going to be this um Mercedes. It was a Mercedes-280E, the W123, so like the late 70s, early 80s one. It was in this sort of signal red colour. Um, the idea was that that was going to be his. And then he bought my mum a Triumph, oh, whatever the last Triumphs were, I can't remember what it was now.

Acclaim?

Might have been an acclaim. Yeah. But obviously that didn't happen. My mum drove the Mercedes, he had the Triumph. And so um he he basically had that for a few years until he bought a Rover 200, I think, which he had for a couple of years. And then he dailied the MGB once it was restored for a few years, and then got a Citron XM. So he's always had well, other than the rover, he's always had quite interesting cars as well. Yeah.

Quite a nice thing, the XM, isn't it? Don't see many of those anymore.

Oh, yeah, they're fantastic. Um, I mean it felt like a spaceship at the time. Yeah. So he had the estate and it was huge. It felt huge. I mean, by today's standards, it probably isn't really. But I mean, I remember we went um so I'm a massive motorsport fan. I've only ever been to the British Grand Prix twice for qualifying when I was a kid, and you know, the first time was quite bougie because my dad was working with um I basically they'd engineered it so that they would take clients to the British Grand Prix, and then I think none of the clients could conveniently come. So I got to go along like for the qualifying. Um and then the the next year he wasn't working there, but we still went to the qualifying on like a general admission ticket, and we um we slept in the boot of the Citron XM because it was just so so huge that you know we could fit quite well, really. But yeah, and that car I did a bit of go-karting when I was a kid as well, and we we could fit the whole car in there, we didn't have to trailer it or anything like that. So that was that was a great car, yeah.

I think they're quite overlooked, aren't they? And there's a real sort of design lineage between like the um like the DS and then the CX.

Say it.

And that it's just just yeah, it just kind of oh the BX obviously.

Thank you.

But um the BX was slightly smaller, wasn't it? But yeah, it's kind of just that sort of low slung silhouette. Yeah, it just got a little bit more angular each time, but very much kind of it's the relation, it's the son of or daughter of.

Um, yeah, and just so comfortable as well. And I mean, from what I could tell, pretty decent on the road too. I mean, my dad has always been a fairly spirited driver, and sometimes you've just got it in his head that he would like hone this around on like a twisty jewel carriage way around like Sussex or something, and it could keep up pretty well, so yeah, very much overlooked, I think, in accent.

Um, so did your dad go into a career in automotive? Was that kind of what he did or what he does? No. Your father's still about.

Yeah, he is, yeah. So he's um he's uh 74 now, so he only retired properly a couple of years ago because he's just one of those people who I mean, probably the hardest working person I know, to be honest, my dad. He's always just really, really got on with it. And I think um that kind of speaks to what he did for a career.

Oh, okay.

So he left school, I think he's very intelligent, I think he was getting good grades, then he met my mum, and uh his schoolwork kind of took a back seat, and so yeah, he didn't get the school grades that he was he was expecting.

Yeah.

And at that time, which I suppose would have been like the late 60s, um, around where we lived, uh so I grew up in Bromley, they were in sort of South London at that point, sort of a little bit further out, there was sort of this industry of companies springing up that would do it sounds it's so random and niche, but if you're an oil company, you send a a ship out and you sort of map the the ocean floor or whatever, and all that data gets collected. This industry basically would uh take that data and they would move it onto another kind of data format. And that's basically been his whole job.

Okay.

So he started that when he was 18 or 19, and that's what he was doing when he retired at 72.

Yeah.

Um, and it doesn't it's one of those things that it doesn't really feel like it's a whole industry, but it's just one of those really niche things. And I think by the sounds of things, a lot of people who got into that at quite a young age, it was basically a chance to mess around and you know, earn earn a little bit of money that wasn't particularly well paid. But he is just an incredibly conscientious person, so he quickly sort of rose through the ranks, became a supervisor and stuff like that, and has sort of led teams doing that for for years and years, um, but always sort of had side hustles in motorsport and cars. So he set up a brokerage for Ferraris in sort of the mid-90s, and he I think brokered the sale of a few like three, four, eights or something at the time.

Nice.

Um, he saw in the back of Autosport once that somebody was had this kind of digital alignment system for racing cars, and they were looking for a distributor in the UK. So he sort of faxed them, said, Oh, I could do that, and went round to all the F1 teams selling this thing to them. So, yeah.

Yeah, entrepreneurial. Yeah. And obviously, yeah, you kind of mentioned he had the MG, had the Ferrari, kind of things sort of played out reasonably well, and he went racing, so he kind of made some good choices.

Yeah, I mean, I don't think it probably sounds like we were really well off, but we we weren't really. He did okay. I don't think if you said to him that he had had a good career and made decent money, he would say, Oh no, I just you know I done okay. But I think from where he started to what he's achieved is pretty pretty impressive.

Yeah, yeah.

But also, I mean you've got to remember, so he bought that MG when he was 21 for probably a few hundred quid.

Yeah.

Um, and even the Ferrari, when he bought that, those cars only cost about 16 grand, I think.

Yeah.

And we saw that car again a couple of years ago, which came up for sale, which was now pretty ropey. And they're asking 55 grand for it. You know, I suppose it was a time when you could kind of, if you had a bit of spare money and it's something you really, really wanted, you could do it. And that's what he did. I mean, it cars came before pretty much anything else. So our family holiday would be going to see my family in Cyprus because that meant we could sort of stay at their place.

Yeah.

And we only had to pay for flights and stuff like that.

Yeah.

And yeah, my mum had to wait about 35 years for the kitchen that they were going to have done when they moved into the house in 1989. So cars were just the main thing.

Um, what were you driving when you went out to Cyprus?

I guess the family had cars out there, so is it like Fiat Pandas or whatever you kind of would potter around in or uh my granddad had a Toyota Corolla, I think it was, which must have been about so I think he sold it in like 2003, something like that.

Yeah.

And by that point it must have been about 35 years old. No air conditioning, uh nothing like that. I mean, typically what would happen is you'd go over there and there would be a relative that you'd never heard of who could lend you their car, so it'd be like some kind of Mitsubishi lancer, but obviously like a mid-80s Mitsubishi lancer or something like that. Yeah. Um, I remember once we actually hired a car and it was some kind of like a Suzuki Vitar or something. Yeah. And I felt like I felt incredible that we'd like we had this hire car and the roof came off and stuff like that. But yeah, most of the time it was some obscure relative could lend us a car for a week and you didn't have to didn't have to worry about it much more than that.

And is it just you? Have you got brothers and sisters? Oh, I've got a sister. Okay.

So she's seven years older than I am. So she was around when my dad was doing sort of the motorsport stuff, and she remembers going and sort of watching him do stuff like that. Yeah. But yeah.

You don't remember going to kind of the track and stuff while he was racing?

I think he had to sort of stop by the time that I was around. I think it was getting too expensive to carry on.

Yeah.

So yeah, no, I never saw him, I never saw him race at all, which is which is a shame. Because I from what I've heard, admittedly from him, um, what I've heard, he was he was pretty good. Like the Delta that he had, um, by the time the 1985 car was designed, Patrick Head had long left, you know. Um, so I'd have no idea who designed that car, but to all intents and purposes, it was pretty awful. Like it had a really short wheelbase, so it was incredibly nervous, which meant as soon as you got into sort of a decent position, you'd spin and you'd lose it all again. I think he managed to get that car to fifth once, which was quite an achievement for you know a competitive Formula Ford grid and pretty pretty awful car.

What what became of it? Do you recall him selling? And was there an emotional attachment there when he sold that you kind of thought, I wish he kept it so I could use it when I'm old enough to drive?

I definitely did have that feeling, yeah.

Yeah.

But I was also I was really pleased because he honestly just didn't touch it. So there were three cars in his garage, which was the MG, the C, which my mum would take out every now and then, the Ferrari, which he loved and worshipped, and then this Wombler Ford, which basically sat under a cover and nothing happened to it. So I remember when he sold it, I must have been sort of eight or nine, and just being elated because we'd managed to get the engine started, and I was sat there, you know, yeah, turning it over and making sure the ignition switch was on, and and I think I could just about reach the pedals to to rev it and stuff, and thinking this is incredible. But it was definitely the right thing to do because you know, I'm sure I think it went over to Ireland and might still be being used. I'm not sure.

Yeah, historic racing and stuff, people pick those things up, don't they? And I guess maybe it's slightly less competitive. So if it's a bit nervous or whatever, it doesn't matter so much. It's just a bit more of a jolly. Yeah, that's it. Um, do I get the hint the MG's still around then?

Yeah, he's still got the MG.

Well, that's cool.

Yeah, I mean, he doesn't use it very much anymore because it probably is at the point where it could do with a bit of recommissioning work. You know, he I think had some stuff done to it in the 80s when Rust was starting to show. And uh I think if you took it to a an MG specialist, they'd probably faint if they saw the work that had been that had been done to it. But yeah, it still gets a little bit of use. Um he also, when I was about 15, we bought the rights to a kit car.

Okay. Which was a another of his schemes.

Yeah. So the the funny thing is, I guess growing up, it sort of felt like a game of two halves, if you like, because until I was about 11 or 12, my dad had a pretty good job. Yeah, he had this incredible Ferrari, which just I loved. Um, and these cars, we had a nice house. And then when I started secondary school, I think in that sort of that January, he lost his job because the oil industry is so sort of peaks and troughs, it just it can happen. He'd been raid redundant a few times, but this time he was in his early fifties, and at that point that was a real problem. So he didn't find a permanent job until two thousand and seven, I think. So that was five years.

Wow.

So things felt quite different then because obviously, you know, he wasn't earning a regular wage and and and things like that. So it was tough, but it was also a really I mean, I look back on it pretty fondly because whereas he'd had a job which meant that he was at the office until quite late and you go abroad quite regularly and stuff like that. I have my teenage years where my dad was always around, which was great. I think when you're a boy growing up, having that is so valuable.

Yeah, yeah.

And it meant that we could do a lot together. And it also meant that he basically thought of everything he could to try and make money. So he did life insurance, he was a life insurance salesman for a bit. He tried selling like aloe vera products and stuff like that.

Okay.

I mean, he set up a business to try and do like the job that he'd been doing, but obviously, you know, it was it was quite slow going at times. And so this kit car thing was a bit of a another one of those kinds of ideas. So I think I was flicking through Octane one day, and in the back of that, there was an ad that said Kit Car Company for Sale, 5,000 pounds. And I thought, what? So I said to my dad, look at this. What do you think this is? And he made some inquiries, and it turns out there was this old boy who, back in like the early 90s, I think it must have been, had it in his head that he would build a what was going to be a replica of a Ferrari 166 Spider Coursa, which was one of the very first Ferraris in 1948, but to all intents and purposes, a really ugly car.

Okay.

I mean, it was not a good-looking car in the slightest. And so he started off with this idea and then halfway through realized that what he was making didn't look very nice at all. So so he actually sort of designed this body shell, which is kind of somewhere between that and like a 1950s F1 car. And it sits on top of a Triumph Spitfire chassis.

Okay.

So we went down to see someone who had built one of these cars who'd worked for Morgan and you know done an incredible job. He took us out in it, and I thought it was incredible. And to my surprise, my dad did as well. And so we basically went with this guy and a trailer in his like ro I think it was a Rover 400 to pick up the fiberglass moulds for this thing and all the drawings and stuff like that. Cool.

Yeah.

And yeah, my dad would basically fabricate all of like the chassis modifications that you had to do himself. He'd have a body shell made, and people would buy this kit for I think two and a half grand or something at the time, and make their own little 1950s um sports car. So he's got a couple of those in his garage now as well.

Oh wow, okay. That's cool. You'd have to send us some pictures of those.

Yeah, no, they're lovely. One of them runs and he uses that fairly regularly, but the other one is a bit more high maintenance because it's got a what's become quite an exotic engine now.

Okay.

They weren't at the time, but now they're quite difficult to get parts for.

That's kind of cool. I oh you were telling that story, and I was like, that sounds really random. I was like, it's not random at all because he studied race car engineering. That's half of the course almost. Yeah. Um, do you remember kind of interesting cars belonging to neighbours? Like what else was in the street when you were growing up, or kind of what teachers had, maybe?

So a few doors down from us, there was a family. Um, I think the guy was I think he was a builder, um, but he'd clearly done very well for himself. Yeah, I think he had like a a building company, and they had a purple TVR Cerber. Oh wow, which you could just hear whenever they were going out. Yeah, this thing fired up and it was incredible. So they had that for a few years and then they upgraded to an Aston DB7. Yeah. Around when the James Bond film came out. That was was there one that no, the that was a Vanquish or something, wasn't it? But around that time when like Aston was cool again.

Yeah.

This this boy went to my school and he saw his Aston turn up and thought, oh my god, that's incredible. And then he jumped in. I'm like, oh wow, okay.

What colour?

Uh green. It was like the British racing green.

Okay. Very nice.

Yeah.

That's cool. Any cars, Alex, that you're well, not just your dad anyway, you've got a hankering for yourself to get involved with.

Well, the the kit car that is not running at the moment, I'm hoping to get down here at some point and sort of be able to tinker on that for a bit and and and use that because my youngest son is now really into cars. He's three, and our family car doesn't quite cut it for him, I don't think. So, yeah, I'd I'd quite like to be able to sort of do that with him.

Yeah.

I mean, like everyone, I always go through phases of being like, oh, that'd be incredible. The one thing, sort of the ultimate goal, if things go incredibly well and I one day am able to do it, would be a Ferrari boxer.

Oh, right.

And that again comes back to my dad. I mean, back at this point when he wasn't working, we I don't even know why we did it to ourselves, but we went to a Ferrari showroom called Kent High Performance, and they had this beautiful Ferrari, I think it was a 365 boxer that was owned by two brothers. Um, they were like Maitre D's at a hotel, and they basically poured all of their money into maintaining this car. It was immaculate. I think back then they were like 40,000 pounds, so completely unobtainable to us. But now I think those are about 300 grand. Yeah. But that is for me, that is the the ultimate.

Nice, cool. Um, any memories of music in the cars while you were kind of going places?

Yeah, so I mean, not so much with my dad. I think when I was a bit older, I appreciated some of the music he was playing, like he had Pink Floyd and Leonard Cohen and stuff like that. We went on a great road trip, and I remember a lot of the music from that. We sort of went around Italy when I was 19, I think.

What did you go in?

He had an Alpha 159 as a company car.

Okay.

And he was about to give it back. And we thought, well, why don't we just, you know.

Wear the tires out.

Yeah, that's it. And you know, I was old enough to be able to drive it, and so it was really good fun. I mean, I I still think about that trip a lot because it was my first time going into Italy. And we did all the things like went to the Ferrari factory, and we went to Brescia where the Millamilia had started like the week before, and they still had everything there. So that was that was incredible. And I still think about the music from that because it doesn't feel like that long ago, but obviously cars still have a six CD changer. So we listened to basically the same six CDs doing like 2000 miles or whatever it was. Yeah. But music was really more my mum's domain, to be honest.

Okay.

So I remember a lot of the music that she would listen to, things like Sinead O'Connor and ABBA and things like that. But then I was thinking about this when I heard you ask someone else actually, and I was thinking about what was that for me? And actually, the the thing that struck me was that by the time I was sort of 12 or 13, all the music in the car was probably the music that I liked, but not because she thought, I'll just put it on because that's what he likes, but because she always made a real effort to kind of be interested in the things that I was interested in. So if I was into a band, she would get into that band and try and learn about it and find the music that she likes. And she's she's done that basically ever since I was a teenager. And I as a dad to teenagers now, I really do think that's quite incredible that she took the time to be that interested.

Um, what came after the murck then for your mum? Because obviously she stitched your dad up with a triumph acclaim or whatever it was, yeah, and then did the old switcheroo. What kind of came after the merc?

Uh so that Merc was um written off in 1998, I think it was, because a Range Rover ploughed into the back of it on our way to Brighton one day. So then she got a Mercedes 190E, which I mean, it's funny because now people really love a 190E. I can see why, because the shape of it is and and everything was great, but nobody was particularly happy that we had it because it it was a 1.8, so it was really sluggish. I think it might have had some kind of inherent gearbox issue because that's what killed it in the end. And it just felt like a bit of a downgrade, like it had wind-up windows and stuff like that. Okay. So she really didn't like that car.

I think when my dad used to take his merch to the dealer, they used to give him one of those to tie him over for a day or two. And he was used to love giving it back. He used to say it's yeah, it's just not the same, really. But yeah. They're tanks though, aren't they? They're still going quite a lot of them.

Oh yeah, fantastic.

They're everywhere in Germany. Are they? Yeah, there's loads of them, yeah.

Funnily enough though, I mean that car did die of a mechanical issue. And it only had a hundred thousand miles on the clock, but it basically lost its ability to go up hills because of something up with the gearbox. I remember it got chucked in for a Peugeot 307. Oh, right. And driving it on the way to the Peugeot dealer, we were worried it just wasn't going to get up the hill that we were going to have to get up.

Couldn't you meet us at the bottom of the hill by chance?

Yeah. It did feel like that.

Where did the Mercedes come from? Was that off a forecourt or was that kind of a secondhand sort of thing?

Or yeah, it was just off a forecourt. I think probably the Peugeot was probably the first brand new car that my dad ever bought.

Yeah.

You know, we always got used cars and he wasn't going to shell out on a new car at all.

Yeah, fair enough. Fair enough. Um, is there anything else we need to ask you about? Have we missed anything?

Um I don't know. It's been a bit of a whistle stop tour. Oh, it always is, but um the only other car that I suppose was was sort of well, two actually, that that are quite interesting. Okay. My best friend uh secondary school, when we went in like year seven, year eight, his dad had a Lexus.

Okay, yeah, yeah.

The early 90s ones. Yeah. And that was such a rocket. That was incredible.

Bit below the radar though.

Yeah, because it was totally factory. He did nothing to it. It was uh 2.5 litre turbo, I think. And yeah, just an absolute weapon. Nice. We'd get taken out quite a bit in that, and it kind of did that thing that when you're a passenger in a car and it suddenly just takes off and your stomach just goes. It was that kind of feeling.

What colour? Black or dark blue, something like that?

It was metallic gold. Oh my word. That was classy.

Wow. Yeah. It's funny when when Lexus sort of broke in the UK, that was a real sort of if you were driving a Merck or an Audi or a BMW, that was like a sort of secret car to get into, wasn't it? Like, oh, you're gonna you're really gonna sort of gain here and save some money. But do you remember they did the gold badges as well?

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think it might have had a gold badge. I can't remember. Because I don't think they sold them here. I think it must have been that was an import. Import, yeah.

Yeah. There's a guy locally who's got a bit of a liking for old Lexus. He's got a couple from sort of, I don't know, like 89, 90, the saloon ones. I think he might have straight parked one of them because it's it sounds very, very loud, but yeah. Yeah. Bit of a niche one. That is, yeah.

I do like an old Lexus.

And you mentioned there was another one as well.

Oh yeah. So um my granddad on my dad's side, I think he was quite into cars. So he came over with my dad in 1961 and then moved back in the 80s. And somewhere along the way, he'd bought a and I really should have looked at what it what the model was, but it was it was a Daimler. It was after the um whatever the Daimler version of like the Mark II Jag would have been. It was sort of the one after that.

Oh okay. So almost like XJ6 type thing.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. I think they just called him a Daimler VI, I want to say.

Okay, that sounds right. And it was it was this kind of off-white creamy colour, and I only saw I've only seen it twice, um, but I only saw him drive it once. And I just have this memory of he was quite a little man, and I just saw him driving past in this massive white um uh Daimler in Cyprus, yeah, this tiny little man just looking so so proud of this car. Um, and yeah, that's the only other thing that probably when I think about him, because obviously he passed away a long time ago. Um, yeah, that's why that's why I remember wedding car territory over here, that would be, wouldn't it? It would be, yeah. I mean, I do wonder if it was bought with that in mind.

Did he buy it in the UK?

I think so, yeah.

I was gonna say, but that's a pretty obscure car to have over there.

Yeah. I mean, I think it's probably still going somewhere over there. I think a cousin of my dad's um inherited it, and I think someone was going to restore it. But yeah, that was a lovely car. Nice.

Fantastic. Yeah, thank you very much for joining us, Alex. It's been yeah, really good. Some lovely memories.

Thanks very much. No, I've uh really enjoyed this and thanks for having me again.

Yeah, not a problem at all. And yeah, thank you for your support as well. Thank you for listening. Very welcome. Thanks, Alex. We'll see you soon. See you later. Bye. Cheers, bye. Cool. Yeah, I enjoyed that. I wasn't expecting his dad to have a Formula Ford in the garage, but that's kind of Yeah, that's quite incredible, isn't it, really?

To see uh all that going through your garage as a kid. And yeah, why wouldn't you be uh a petrolhead as well after being immersed in all of that?

Well, yeah, absolutely. A little bit of a shame he doesn't remember his dad kind of racing and stuff, but yeah, from a point of view of oh just going in the garage to play in dad's racing car. Yeah, that's pretty cool.

Absolutely, yeah. Nice as well that he can sort of stick that in the well, as a to-do list in the future of getting things up and running again and oh with the kit car, yeah, certainly. Yeah. Rekindling those memories.

And yeah, lovely that his dad's obviously kept hold of the MG and he's still got some of the kit cars as well from kind of back in the day. But it's like his dad was in his seventies, and he's and he bought that MG in his twenties, so he's kept it for fifty years.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Gateway classic and he kept it.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So yeah, lovely to yeah have Alex on. You know, he's been a support and he's listened since the early days, he got us in touch with um Nick from Iconic and um point us in the direction of a couple of other people as well. So yeah, great to have his support with what we're doing and hear his story too.

Yeah, yeah, I definitely recommend Iconic as well if you're in the need of that kind of well auction platform. Very good.

Oh absolutely. And if you're sort of searching for another episode to listen to, then yeah, go look up Nick Wells because um there were some great stories in there too.

Yeah.

So yeah, that was great. I enjoyed it. Yeah, it's a good one. Okay, thank you very much, John. Thank you. We'll uh yeah, wrap it up. Roll the credits.

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