64 CARMAGAZINE.CO.UK | APRIL 2019
Amazingly I got the job, and in March 1994 I left the PR agency in
Edinburgh where I was writing press releases for Kwik Fit and moved to
Peterborough. My first day in the office, I went out with photographer
Mike Baillie to do my first car shoot, with a Ford Probe. Remember that?
The hilariously crass attempt at a phallic Capri-wannabe? Still, I didn’t
mind – I couldn’t believe I was getting paid to drive someone else’s car
round in circles.
Performance Car, April 1994 – there I am, in a Ford Probe, looking about- I tell myself the last 25 years have gone in a flash – that it feels like just
five minutes since I embarked on my new life in magazines; but one look
back on Performance Car, April 1994, and I realise it was a lifetime ago. The
First Drives section includes the Audi RS2 and original Renault Laguna; the
Formula 1 season preview features Ayrton Senna joining Williams; and the
cover story pits an old-school Aston Vantage against the then-new Ferrari
456 GT (which looks like it’s riding on 15-inch trolley wheels). No traction
control, no CO2 emissions, no speed cameras: 1994 was like the Wild West.
Of course, I didn’t get to drive the Audi, Aston or Ferrari that first month.
Not even the Laguna. I had to wait until the next issue, May ’94, before I
had my first copy published. I wrote short first drives for a Vauxhall Corsa
1.4 Flair and a Mitsubishi Shogun. Whoo hoo! But then I can’t complain
- that same month I got to drive my first ever Ferrari – two in fact, a 308
GT4 and a monstrous, side-straked 512TR. Mindblowing. I also had my first
crash, in a Honda NSX... though that particular milestone I might gloss
over, if that’s okay with you.
Editor-at-large Mark Walton came to CAR
when Performance Car merged with us in 1998lease get out the party
poppers and hang up
the saggy bunting,
because this month
represents a milestone in
my career: it’s 25 years since
I first became a car journalist.
Part of me is absolutely delight-
ed that I’ve managed to scam my
way for a quarter century; part of me is horrified that I’m now
so old.
My first job was on a now-defunct magazine called Performance
Car, once a sister title to CAR. I bought a copy in 1993 and came across a
small notice in the news pages: ‘Do you want to be a road tester?’ With no
requirements for experience or qualifications, the job ad was a free-for-all
for every crackpot, fantasist and dreamer in the country, including me. The
magazine received hundreds of applications, from schoolkids, students,
bored airline pilots and dentists. It took them months to sort through the
CVs, but – miraculously – I got an interview at the magazine’s editorial
offices in Peterborough. I still have the letter.
It wasn’t a conventional interview. After a brief, friendly chat with the
editor Paul Clark and road test editor John Barker, I was taken out to a near-
by country road in a Honda Prelude 2.0 VTEC. John got in the passenger
seat and I got in the driver’s seat, the idea being I would drive us back to the
office while John scrutinised my skills (or lack of) like an amoeba in a Petri
dish. That road turned out to be the legendary B660, ‘the ‘Nordschleife of
Cambridgeshire’. Legendary to readers of Performance Car at least, because
we did virtually every photo shoot there.
Anyways, the thing I remember about that drive back was the moment
I was barrelling along, convinced I could see the road sweeping straight
up the valley ahead of me... until I suddenly realised the road ahead was
actually a farm track, and the actual road – the actual road that I was
actually supposed to be driving along without actually killing the two of
us – swerved hard left between the hedges about 15 metres ahead. Ha ha,
just a little rookie error! Idiot. Thankfully, without giving away my alarm,
I slammed on the brakes, teetered the Prelude through the corner by a
whisker and then took off again as if it was all intentional. In my mind,
I like to picture John nodding his head with approval at my late braking,
while I invisibly cross myself like a Catholic priest in a horror film.P
Illustration by Peter Strain‘No traction
control, no CO2
emissions, no
speed cameras:
1994 was like the
Wild West’