Motor Spirit -  HCVA Founding Partner
              
HCVA-T0058
            

How did you start the business?

I was a customer of Classic Oils and the guy who started it, it wasn’t really a business for him it was more of a hobby. It had a website, but you couldn’t buy anything online - you had to make an appointment to go and see them and they didn’t really do mail order at all. He wanted to emigrate to New Zealand so we bought the business of him as a going concern. We had another retail business in Aylesbury at the time that had some space in it so I bought it. I’d been a customer before and so we added it to our existing retail offering and the of course put it all online and we’ve grown it from that point onwards. In the last year we have doubled the size of the business, we are in growth mode.  We used lock down to focus on ways of growing the business rather than just sitting and licking our wounds.

What has been your proudest moment in work?

I think probably the tie up with Fuzz and launching our own range of products which is branded Fuzz Townsend’s Classic Oils. It's part of what we laughingly call our retail strategy. We don’t think there is much of a future for just being retailers so our game plan, as you can tell from our website,  is to get as close to the top or at the top of the food chain of everything that we do. We are not particularly interested in just selling other people’s stuff because we think that role is going to be extinct in a short time so hence having our own brand range and being the importer/distributor of our other house brands.

What is the most valuable lesson your work has taught you?

I think when we first started our first retail business in 2009. It was in the depths in that recession at the time after the financial crash and actually it was quite a good time to start a business because borrowing money was impossible. We had to fund the entire operation including buying it from cash flow and so I think watching your cash is the number one lesson and number two lesson is get involved in collective organisations. I can’t count the number of times where being involved with organisations like HCVA and others throughout my time with my own businesses has been an incredibly valuable thing to do.

For example our initial business was in Buckinghamshire and I was involved in the Buckinghamshire Local Enterprise Partnership as a director and the contacts that you make through just being active in the business environment are invaluable. I was able to get involved with and lead the push to get Buckinghamshire to transform into a unitary authority which sounds stupid but in actual fact businesses pay a lot of tax where they are based and we had five local councils in Buckinghamshire at the time, the four district councils and the county, as well as all the parish and town councils of course.  

This was ridiculous because if you were a business, you wouldn’t be organised like that. So we crowdfunded an independent study in how much money could be saved for taxpayers by going unitary which came out with quite a substantial savings figure - and then went public with it and pushed for it and of course it has now happened. I can honestly say that wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t been involved in this kind of collective organisation. For Buckinghamshire based businesses this means that they have a more streamlined, more accountable and more responsive local authority plus it eliminates all the infighting and horse trading between the authorities.

What piece of advice about your work would you give your younger self?

I would say go with your hunches and don’t over think things.  I have found that often your initial instinctive reaction to things is the right one, and if you start over thinking then you can talk yourself out of a position that would have been extremely advantageous. I’ve had that happen several times in business as well as investments that I should have made but didn’t.  So, I would say go with your hunch, go with your gut and listen to people.

What is your favourite car that you have owned - and why?

The Fafnir - an Edwardian aero engine racing car. I sold it, which in a way I’m sad I did and in another I wish I hadn’t. It was exciting and it got me invited to Goodwood twice and it was a remarkable machine but if it blew up it would have been prohibitively expensive to repair it so I’m quite glad I no longer have that to worry about, but I do miss it. It was a 1914 with a 1917 10 litre biplane engine. No front brakes, no roll bar, no seat belts and about 100 horsepower. It would do 90 mph through the speed trap at Goodwood.

What an incredible thing. How did you buy the Fafnir?

I swapped it for another car that I had which was a rather nice Bentley 3 litre special that was actually my Dad’s car.  It was the car that I was picked up from hospital in when I was born, and he scrapped the body around 1968 and so I grew up my whole life with it being just a rolling chassis in his garage.  A friend and I bought it off him in the mid 90’s and put a very pretty, special body on it and got it working properly.  The body was built by the Collis the Sunbeam people in the South West, they only built two of these bodies. The body was a bit of a cross between Eddie Hall style body and the Gurney Nutting Speed Six type body.

What is your least favourite car that you have owned - and why?

Vauxhall Chevette that I had over a winter in the early 90’s and it was just horrible.  It was that baby sick yellow colour that they used to do.  I don’t know whether it was the battery, the starter motor or another proble. I can’t remember but it wouldn’t start on cold mornings. We lived in Cambridgeshire which isn’t very hilly.  I had to park it at the top of a very slight hill where we lived at the time and on my own push it down the hill and jump in and try and bump start it. Hopefully it would go but if it didn’t I was then stuck because I was at the bottom of the hill with a cold car that wouldn’t start. One time when it didn’t start by the time I got to the bottom of the hill, I was so angry with it I slammed the driver’s door and the window shattered.

I’ve had a whole lot of bad cars and I could go on - but that one stands out.

What is a great example of a future classic in your opinion?

I’m a bit biased because I’ve got one - but the Honda Insight. They are quite good value. They were only imported to this country for three years and were a commercial failure. I do like commercial failures as cars because they are also interesting.

It is beautifully designed. It’s all alloy and plastic, the engine is alloy and magnesium. It won the engine of the year award every year it was in production which is incredible for a little 1000cc, 3 cylinder, economy car and of course it was the first hybrid car to be sold in the UK. It wasn’t quite the first in the world but it was the first in the UK and the States and so I think a milestone in automotive development.  

The other thing about it is that it was a hybrid car before they all became fat and heavy. They approached it from the way I would approach it which was to make it as light as possible. Even my version (which is the automatic with air conditioning) it still weighs less than 900kg and that is the heaviest version they made. This is how you would make an economy car isn’t it?  But we all seem to have forgotten that and they all weigh 2 tonnes and whether or not there is one person in them of 5 people they are all too heavy.

The concern in the longer term is the battery of course. Being a hybrid you can take it out and disconnect it and it is still an economy car but there is somebody in the UK who is developing a home-grown lithium iron drop in replacement for it that gives you more power and a quicker delivery of that power to the motor. So, fingers crossed, there is a route forward to it being a sustainable classic.  I got it of course because I’m interested to find out how it’s possible for electric cars to be classics. It’s going to happen and I’m interested to know how will these older cars with batteries survive in the future?

 There is quite a good article in the Spectator about the death of cheap cars.

It’s something that interests me because its important. What happens when cars need a new £20,000 battery pack and they don’t have an internal combustion engine to get you by? What is the future?  What is the aftermarket future when the manufacturer is no longer interested? 

My son for example who is 20 has just got his first £650 car and it still performs as it did when it was new and is still as economical as it was when it was new. Where will the £650 cars be in 20 years time?  I don’t think there will be any because it will go from being a £20,000 car to zero because if the battery costs £20,000 then what happens then?

What about advances in battery technology in that time?

Advances in battery tech are very good in theory and very good for new things but as we see with mobile phones, they are not brilliant for upgrades.  

You go to Tesla in 20 years time and say I want today’s technology batteries in my twenty year old Tesla they will tell you to get knotted because of the wrong form factor etc. These aren’t like AA batteries that you just plug in - they are battery cells that form the structure of the car so aren’t interchangeable. This is something that we all have to grapple with and is worthy of thought. I’m also interested professionally in thinking there will be opportunities in here for businesses. Is it something that an independent third party can realistically get involved with or not - the idea of replacing batteries and basically providing maintenance when the OEM’s have lost interest.

Nissan announced under an eco-friendly label that they were going to take cars back into the factory after every ownership change which with new cars happens every three years because they are all leased - and so they were going to take these cars back into the factory at the end of each lease and factory refresh them and put them back out for sale again presumably on another lease.  

I thought that’s a good idea though really, they are doing it for money rather than eco-friendliness but a good idea and then they said we think that each car will be able to come back to the factory 3 times over its ten year life. Ten year life?  So where is the eco-friendliness in the ten year life of a car? After ten years a car is still new. This is the route we are being led down by the OEMs in cahoots with Governments. Treat cars like mobile phones - you’ll never own it, you’ll chuck it away prematurely and we’ll all think it's environmentally friendly when of course it isn’t.

What has been your favourite ever classic car experience?

It was on the Norwich Union Classic Run in the early 90’s - something like 1993. I was the course closing car in my Mini Metro from Norwich to Silverstone and the route took us through various proving grounds at MIRA. It was Tulip diagrams to a proving track - a couple of laps and then on to the next one.  

The star of the Norwich start was a Ford GT40 provided by the Ford Museum - a GT40 MK3 driven by Gary Numan. He turned up late, so late in fact that by the time he arrived I should have closed the start as the course closing car, and he wouldn’t have been able to start but I waited for him.  

So, it was me in the Mini Metro and the GT40 - we were the last cars by a long way so I kept overtaking him when he was stopped and then he would come roaring past me which was great in itself and then it was about five miles away from Silverstone at the end and I came across the car broken down on the side of the road. Of course, me being me I had toolboxes and everything in the back of my car hoping that somebody would break down! 

So, I stopped behind the car, and he had a fuel leak coming out the top of the big Holly carburettor on top of the engine, all over the hot engine in a fibreglass car worth a fortune, so I messed around with that and managed to fix the fuel leak and followed him carefully and slowly to Silverstone.  The Ford guy was waiting at Silverstone ready to take it back to the museum so I told him what I’d done so he could fix it properly and he listened to what I said and then chucked me the keys and said go and get it! 

So, I ran to where the GT40 was parked - of course surrounded by people. I’d never even sat in one before and I wasn’t even sure that I'd fit as I’m 6’2” - 6’3” so I took my shoes off and chucked them on the passenger seat like I did it every day. I got in the driver’s seat, remembered where all the switches were for the fuel pumps (there was one each side I seem to remember) and the ignition switch which was a switch not a key and then started it and then stalled it in front of all these people, driving it in my socks, and then I stalled it again. The third time I got it going.  But I think even including Goodwood and various other things that was my favourite.

Why did you join the HCVA?

Because I’m a long-time committed believer in sensible collective action, presentation of a collective point of view and representation of that point of view to the people who make the rules. I always joined things with a view to not just being a member but getting involved and doing things.

Why should people become HCVA members?

Because we are in the crosshairs, we have to have a justifiable reason to exist beyond the fact well we’ve always done it.

We all have the choice. We can sit there in our own little world and wait whilst it all comes tumbling down around us or we can get involved and help to educate the powers that be that what we are doing is actually valuable from the point of view of the economy but also from the point of view of the environment and also people's welfare.

What did you wish we’d asked you?

Are you the only person to win the best newcomer in the VSCCs history in an aero engine car? The answer is yes.

In a way that’s why I love this country, I can’t think of any other country where you would be allowed to turn up with no track record and compete in that kind of car. I’d done racing before on motorbikes, but no one knew that and yet I was allowed to hill climb and race in that car. I’m sure people were waiting for me to fly off into the bushes at a rate of knots, but I managed not to and won best newcomer across the whole VSCC membership -  so I’m competing against people obviously on handicap but most people who win that award are driving an Austin Seven.