Summer 2019 | TOTAL MX-5 |^57[ READER’S RIDE ]
T
he difference between men and boys
is the price of their toys, goes the old
expression. That certainly holds true
of Tim Blacker. As a kid he had a penchant
for Tonka toys that then morphed into a
passion for those great-looking Tamiya
radio-controlled off-road buggies. The
natural progression from that was on to the
monster trucks that are so popular in the
US. You might imagine, then, that as an adult
one of the aforementioned monster trucks
would be Tim’s automotive plaything, but
while the spirit of his four-wheeled toy pays
homage to those high-riding behemoths, at
its heart lies something a little more down
to earth...
Well, it used to be a lot closer to earth
before Tim got his hands on it: standard
mk2 MX-5 height off the ground, in fact. So
why convert a low-slung sports car into a
mini monster truck when there are so many
other more appropriate vehicles for such
treatment? ‘Well it all started where so
many crazy ideas begin,’ recounts Tim,
‘during a session of watching YouTube.
Monster trucks, obviously. I chanced upon a
handful of videos from the US where people
had hacked about knackered old MX-5s,
stuck big wheels and tyres on them, and
then gone roaring across the fields.
‘And I thought that it looked like a lot of
fun. Up until that point I’d been into
Porsches, but with the last of them sold I
was keeping an eye out for another project
that I could use on the weekends and on
sunny days. I knew that MX-5s are great
cars to drive and that by creating a high-
rise version the entertainment factor would
be even greater.’
As co-owner of Autoworks bodyshop in
Carlisle, Tim’s a bit of a stickler for doing a
proper job, so he threw himself into
researching what would be required to
build a high-ridin’ roadster that didn’t just
look the part from a distance, but would
also measure up to close inspection. ‘Most
of the cars that I’d seen on YouTube were
roughly chopped up to make room for the
big off-road tyres and taller suspension, but
they could only be driven on dirt tracks and
fields – they weren’t road legal. My aim was
to build a car that when finished could be
driven straight down to the MOT station.’
Rather than hunt down a wreck that could
be welded up, raised, and then coaxed
through an MOT, Tim decided to approach
the project from the opposite direction. And
it’s at this point that the avid MX-5
enthusiast might want to skip a few lines of
text, or maybe even stop reading
altogether... ‘I began looking for the most
solid example I could find,’ Tim says with a
slight glint in his eye. ‘And what I found was
a 2002 mk2 Phoenix limited edition with a
full service history and a fat wad of bills toA childhood obsession with Tonka
toys and Tamiya radio controlled
off-roaders ultimately led Tim
Blacker to create a mk2 with a big
difference...
Toy
Story