28 auto italia
surprisingly high-set passenger seat. Steve, like a pro,
buckles up the six-point harnesses in no time – and
then sorts it out for me, as I’m making a pig’s ear of it.
Earlier, he’d done a few warm-up laps, allowing Michael
and I to enjoy the raw, evocative, pure motorsport
mash-up of engine howl, exhaust blare and gearbox
whine. The vital 70 degrees water temperature
wouldn’t take long to generate before we could step it
up and give Michael what he wants. With a fierce,
purposeful thud, Steve engages first, and we’re away.
A few corners later, Steve’s already dialled in. The
sensation of the front end turning instantly on a
pinhead, and immediately adopting feel-great poise
through corners, is glorious. My mind can barely keep
up, either with how late Steve turns in, or how early
he’s back on the power, flooding the cabin with more
of the gearbox whine that used to dominate BTCC
in-car videos in the 1990s.
If the first lap was quick, the second is frightening –
mostly because of just how fast this thing accelerates.
All those horses, little more than a tonne in weight, a
50:50 torque split and a gaggle of limited-slip
differentials (plus nice sticky tyres thanks to the hot
spring sunshine) easily compress my stomach. It’s like a
motorbike, gulping through the seamless-shift gears
and hurtling towards the horizon at a mind-boggling
velocity, before race-spec brakes painfully compress
shoulder blades into seatbelts. Steve, hands blurred on
the steering wheel, fires it arrow-like and beautifully-
balanced through corner after corner.
At the end of the run, Steve waits for the verdict. It’s
amazing. What a thing! It looks beautiful and could be a
garage queen of the highest order – but from just a
few laps, I know it really deserves to be given a life of
action. Steve and Walkers have spent a fortune making
this car perform even better than the iconic originals. It
oozes authenticity and deserves to be used as the
original owner outlined in his spec: raced, rallied,
hillclimbed, compaigned.
Whether it will is another matter. Steve’s labour of
love is now up for sale, with a six-figure price tag. It’s
surely worth every penny. As we leave Blyton, I watch
Steve loading it up on to his low-loader and repeat to
myself once again: it really is beautiful. Then Steve’s
comment about how cars need to be used flashes
back. Could you be the one to make full use of this
incredible machine?IIISome ‘rally stage’-style
checks in progress prior to
the car’s hot action laps
for photography