Andy Plumb: Spotting Cars from a young age, caravan holidays, Posters of Sierras and 2CVs and being a Car Designer. S7E1

Welcome to MyDactic Tower, a podcast discussing the personal relationship with automatic data. And you know what? It doesn't even have to be a battery data car. It can be your mum, your grand, your dad, your daughter, or even a neighbour. If it made an impression, let's talk about it. Hello. Hello. Can you hear me? I can. This is wonderful news. I've set up in uh my friend James and Martha's kitchen again because I've got builders in at home and they're uh auditioning for Stomp. So hopefully, yeah, I think I think they'll get the role. But um a bit noisy at home, so yeah, I've wandered up the road. I brought both laptops with me because I couldn't remember which one would connect to the Wi-Fi, yeah. It's like curries. Only without the number. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, sadly. Um how are you doing, Andy? You alright? Yeah, we're good, thank you. Yeah, thank you very much for joining us. Um hi Andy, how you doing?

Hi, John.

For the benefit of the tape, we're joined by Andy Plum, who I think I stumbled across your work on Instagram, good old Instagram. Uh turns up wonderful people doing wonderful things. And forgive me if I'm wrong, you're a car designer of some sorts, in particular involved with a Reliant Robin or the redesign of.

Yeah, that's exactly right. Yeah.

So um, yeah, as listeners may or may not kind of recall, I had some involvement with a three-wheeled van back in my uh very early days. Before I could actually drive, my mum bought me a Reliant Super Van so I could mess around with it on the drive. So I have got a a soft spot for three-wheelers. And so um that kind of just adds to the intrigue, really. So um yeah, welcome along. Where can people find you, Andy, if um if they want to look you up?

They can find me on Instagram or LinkedIn, and um they can have a look on my publisher website as well, if they like.

Okay, fantastic. Um, so yeah, without further ado, um, what's your earliest car memory?

Well, I think it's when I was a real little kid, and um I was an always a geek, and I could look out the window of the back of my mum dad's car and tell them what car was following at night just by the look of the headlamps. And and uh that's uh how geeky I was. And so I think the the oldest car I remember was always forwards, like Ford Corsair, I think. Okay, and I love that car.

Yeah, I can relate to that actually. You try and spot the cars either off the wing mirror that's just kind of pulling next to you or off the rear lights or yeah, the front lights or whatever. Just yeah, these set these little challenges in your head.

Yeah.

And what colour was the Ford Corsair? I think it was a blue one, I think. Cool. And who was in the car? Have you got brothers and sisters as well, or is it just you?

Yeah, I've got a younger sister and my mum and dad. They'd have been in the car, and then uh I think I bored them all sensors by telling them which car was following us at every given moment.

Where do you feel that came from? Is that a kind of an influence perhaps from parents or grandparents or something, or is it just it just it just popped up? It just popped up.

I loved cars. I know my grandfather was into cars a lot, okay. But no, I've from an early age always wanted to, you know, I've loved cars, that's it. I can't explain it.

Fair enough. Have you got any memorable cars that your your mum or your dad had at all?

Well, they were pretty dull, they weren't into cars. So mum had a a Morris miner, a traveller, and my dad had a Morris Oxford, and then he went off Morris's and British Leyland and got into Ford, so they had a Cortina.

Okay.

I think the best car my dad ever had was a Launch Sierra, an A-Reg Sierra Gear Company car. Nice. And that was that was wow.

So you yeah, you mentioned obviously yeah, your mum and your dad. Were your mum and dad both working? What were they doing? What were their careers?

Um my dad was, yeah, he was he was a company man and mum was a uh stay-at-home mum.

Yeah, yeah. It's quite a common theme, isn't it, among uh older parents like dad at work, stay-at-home mum?

Yeah, yeah, and I think it's good, I think it's great. I'm I'm glad that you know my parents decided to do that. And I've done the same myself with with my stepkids, is uh I'm the one who uh works and uh my wife has been a stay-at-home mum, so that's great.

Yeah, definitely. What what was your sort of typical journey if we kind of go back to your childhood? Were you taking the car to school or was it cars for weekends or holidays or car to school?

Basically, yeah, car to school, I think, was probably the main the main journeys, yeah.

Oh yeah, that was what, a couple of miles or sort of a a longer journey?

No, just a couple of miles. I think my my parents lived right on the outskirts of Ashburton in Devon. Okay, and my dad always has an eye for bargain, so uh he bought a house on that triangle of land between the dual carriageway and the slip road to the dual carriageway. So we got through a few family cats.

Put it that way. Oh my god. Oh goodness. Your back garden like a memorial for uh past cats.

You could say that, yes, yes. But uh plenty of car spot in there, that's for sure.

Yeah, I'm sure. Definitely. How about um school friends, that sort of thing? Any memorable cars that their parents may have had?

Oh, I think uh everybody's quite dull. I remember one guy I didn't know particularly well a year or two older than me, his dad had an e-type. And that was obviously his Sunday car. Every time I sort of walked past for the scouts or something like that, I'd see an e-type in their front sort of yard area. And uh it wasn't a collector's car then, but it obviously is still something absolutely special and you know amazing. So I think that was the only thing that springs to mind, really, if I'm honest.

What colour was that?

I think it was a dark blue or black, for what I remember. A cabri or hardtop? No, coupe. Okay, probably if I'm gonna cast mine back, it would have been a series one, series two, something like that. It was an earlier one.

Very nice. Was there kind of a Halo car for you growing up? Obviously, you got into a design sort of aesthetic led industry. Was there a a poster on the wall that which was kind of the car you always wanted?

Uh I never had a Lamborghini or a testrosser on the wall, I'm afraid. I was um always a bit too geeky for that. So I think I always had uh from a two CV poster on the wall when Car Magazine did their photo shoot of the last two CVs to be built in Paris. So that was uh on my wall.

Okay.

And uh uh Ford Sierra and Fords, really, I thought they were amazing design-wise, you know, when they launched Sierra and Granada Scorpios and uh whatever. So I'm afraid there's a story of my life, but there's nothing too glamorous about my car uh things as a kid.

I think, yeah, we've we've done quite a lot of these now. Um it's not always about the glamour, is it, John of these? It's kind of it's sort of unpicking the little stories, and I guess we'll get on to music in a minute and those sort of things and the trips you take, and then as you sort of start going through these things, you kind of unlock little memories, you're like, Oh, I forgot about that. And then oh, on that day, yeah, we broke down. But yeah, the guy who came to fix the car was X, Y, and Z, or he knew this person, or and then yeah, all of a sudden we sort of start unpicking those things. Um, you know, so obviously all of these things which kind of go past in our life then lead us to where we are today, don't they?

Yeah, unwittingly.

Yeah, absolutely, uh unwittingly. You're not sort of at that moment in time thinking, yes, yeah on the wall or two C V on the wall, I'm gonna go and do this. But they all sort of come together, and I guess those vehicles are a bit more sort of utilitarian, they're more practical, which I guess is what you sort of went into.

Um, yes and no, but I I did always want to be a car design now. I remember always down the shop, down the corner shop or whatever with Mum at the little supermarket in Ashburton, and the vicar would say, you know, oh, so what would you like to be when you grow up young Andrew? And uh I never once said, Oh, I want to be an engine driver or something like that. It was always I want to cover in cars for a living, and I wanted to be a car designer since I was six. Yeah, so bizarrely, never liked any exotic cars. I just I don't know, just can't explain.

Fantastic. I yeah, that's was what I wanted to do. I wanted to be a car designer, and I'm not yeah, nearly talented enough to do it, but um, that was kind of my dream for a long time was to do that.

Must say your impersonation of a vicar is outstanding as well. Yeah, very much so.

My parents went to church, and so um my vic was called Mr. Charnley, which was quite a fantastic old-fashioned name, that is, but um yeah, proper proper Devonshire accent as well.

Nice. I think he did some voiceover work as Father Christmas as well about that, Vicar, I think.

I think he has probably did, yeah. He didn't have a beer as far as I remember though.

Well, that can be arranged these days, can't it? Yeah, I guess it could be the wonders of fancy dress. So, yeah, if we go back to kind of yeah, I guess childhood journeys, were you taking holidays in the car? Where where would you be going? You're already in the West Country, which was um everyone else's holiday destination.

That's right. Well, we didn't really. I think we went to holiday out of Cornwall, or we went to the New Forest. I think it's as far away as we went. And they were always caravan holidays. I I never went abroad. And um static caravan. No, no, no, a proper Torah.

Our tower. Oh, okay.

Towed behind Forest Traveller, which always overheated. Or then later on, my dad, as I say, I for a bargain, went to car auction to buy the family cars, and we had a Mark II escort four-door in this forest green, because somebody wrote my mum's green Morris Traveller off. And I remember it stank a cigarette smoke inside and it leaked lent a bit with odd panel gaps all the way around that dad had managed to pick up from the car auction. But as a kid, I I didn't really know any different. But um, that used to overheat turn the caravan as well. That's my overbearing memory of caravan holidays was uh overheated by the side of the M5 or whatever it was. Fantastic.

Is that something that would happen? Kind of everyone out, cups of tea on a rug at the side of the road while you cooled back down, or probably I sat on a potty having a wee, I should think.

But uh on the subject of that, I had to um this is not a personal story for myself. It's driving my daughter to piano yesterday, or both of them actually, five and seven, and the five-year-old, as soon as we left the house, I need the toilet, I need the toilet badly. So yeah, we had to stop on the A2, which is a new one for us. Um, traffic whizzing by. Al fresco, yeah, yeah. We got it done, yeah.

Yeah, so uh no, we we just uh never really had um had a car that we towed the car with Dad's company cars never had a a tow bar, yeah, always had cortinas or sierras. Okay, yeah, yeah, a couple of Sierras and a couple of cortinas, and um yeah, they they always um always the ones that were looked after, and I think the family cars are the ones that took the beating.

Did you manage to get any influence on the car choices at all? Or was it solely down to your father or your mother?

Well, when I was older, they found out I was uh into my Fords and stuff. So Dad would spec his company car and say, What do you think I should get? And occasionally he would listen to me and occasionally not. He was into bright coloured cars for safety. So we had a signal orange cortina.

Fantastic.

And then we had a primrose yellow cortina. Nice, and then because he couldn't get orange or yellow for his Sierra, he got a white Sierra, which was his closest. And apart from that, I think I had a choice in the interior trim colour and stuff. Nice, that's cool.

Yeah, yeah. We discussed recently, didn't we, with another guest um the lack of sort of vibrant colours nowadays on on new cars? Yeah, there are a few, aren't there, that have sort of crept in, but mainly if you go into like a supermarket car park, it's just a sea of greys and blacks and silvers, isn't it? Yeah, yeah, it's a shame really.

Yeah, it is. I think I think it's changing a bit. I think people are becoming a bit braver, but the trouble is everybody's got the cars on uh higher purchase or whatever on payments, and so they're worried about resale more than what they really want to have themselves, I think.

Yeah, true, true. Yeah, I guess that's yeah, that's true. And yeah, I suppose maybe they won't take a Larry coloured one back at the same value.

I don't think they do, no. Uh I know that whenever I've worked at a company and we've had company cars, the colour scheme that we've been allowed to have has been quite muted. Oh, okay.

That would make sense then. Yeah. So yeah, your journeys, etc. Would your parents be listening to anything? Would you have the radio on or music playing?

No, mum was listening to Terry Wogan a lot, I suppose, when she was by herself. But um, no, dad's dad's never been into music really, so I haven't really gained any of my parents' music tastes, shall we say?

Okay. I think Terry was a staple, wasn't he, for a lot of parents? Certainly in my um on school runs, my dad would have that on religiously.

Yeah, yeah, definitely. Yeah, and that that turned into Simon Mayo for me, I think, when I was listening to that on my uh student days.

It's funny, isn't it, when you get to an age where you start listening to Radio 2 and you kind of you know, oh I remember when this came out? It's sort of a rite of passage, you think, oh I've kind of got to that age.

Simon Mayo was Radio One back then, but uh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

True. That shows my age. Was your father handy with the spanners? Is that why he kind of went down the the uh the auction route or just a risk taker?

Yes, so he's always um done his own maintenance and stuff like that, which uh I've taken over that sort of um you know smartiness, yeah. And I quite like doing it if I'm honest. As long as it's not too hardcore, then uh that's good.

And so kind of come those breakdowns, would he get you out of trouble with that, or were you then calling AA?

No, I think he's always sorting out himself, yeah. That's right. I don't think we had AA membership back then. That would have been too frivolous.

You paint a wonderful picture of it, and I guess, yeah, at least he wasn't setting you up for a complete fall by buying kind of some old sheds and going right, well, I don't even know how to fix it. Like he sort of knew his way around a toolbox.

Yeah, yeah, he did, yeah. You know, we had a barn at the top of the garden which had lanes in and stuff like that. So he was quite handy, did his own building work, that sort of thing. Still does actually. Oh wow. In fact, he's 82 now and he can still shift a ton of rubble quicker than I can.

Wow, fantastic. A medical marvel, yeah.

Pretty much, yeah. He looks the same as a 60-year-old, so it's working somewhere along the line.

Yeah, it's great news. Um, so you mentioned obviously your grandparents a little bit earlier on. What was the story there with regards to vehicles? Do you remember what they were driving in?

And yeah, my my grandfather was a bit of a character, so uh he was a Lancaster bomber pilot in the war.

Oh wow.

So he was a group captain. He had E-types, he changed his car once every year or two, and he had Jaguars and Porsches and all sorts of lovely cars, which um uh when I was older, I was allowed to ride in. And uh, I remember cramming, he had a Porsche 944 at the time, and that was the faster than I'd ever been. Obviously, just 70 miles an hour down the B roads in the backseat of his car. Yeah, and that was my first experience of going fast in a car, but because of his profession, he was an amazing driver, and everything seemed very slow and ordered, nothing was panicked or whatever it was, everything was totally in control, and and even in his 70s, and so that was my first experience of um proper cars, as it were.

Yeah, yeah. Do you remember the colour on the 944?

And a couple, so we had a white one and a gold one.

Nice, cool. I've got one, so yeah. Oh, lovely. Yeah, I'm quite quite a fan of them.

Absolutely. Is yours an S1 or an S2?

So yes, it's oval dash, so later dashboard, but it's a 2.5, so it's kind of the smaller engine. Yeah, it's not got the turbo spec sort of bumpers, etc.

Yeah, yeah.

But it's been messed around with, and um, yeah, it's good, it's good fun.

Yeah, I think they're awesome, awesome cars, really good looking cars. So um, yeah, one of my friends has got a black one at the moment and uh absolutely loves it.

Yeah. So um if we if we kind of touch on your profession, I suppose. When did you get into it? And what sort of things have you been drawing?

Well, um, I got into it, as I say, from the age of six, and uh of course I wish my mum had kept my first watercolours. There was just like um constable painting at the age of six, and uh I think it had two wheels in purple or something like that, of a splodge, but that was my first attempt at car drawing, and I always sort of drew cars at home or in in lessons, the usual thing on exercise books and stuff like that. Yeah, and at the age of 13 to select my GCSE options because I was the first year to do GCSEs, I wrote to Ford and said, How do I become a car designer? Because obviously careers were useless. Yeah, and they thought I was gonna be mechanic or I don't know, an engineer. And I was like, No, no, I want to colour in. So um I wrote a Ford, and Ford wrote back with a complete list of qualifications and which university I should go to. Well, and I followed that list basically, and that's that's how I got into it. Amazing, well done, Ford.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, really helpful. And they sent I've still got them. I used to copy these books of Ford, Sierra and Scorpio design processes and renderings, and that's how I learned how to draw was copying those. Amazing, and um, I've still got them, and I still look at those books now, and I'm still filled with the same awe I was as a kid as like the skill of these designers. The irony, of course, or the nice thing, whichever you look at it, is that as later on down the line, I actually sat next to some of these designers in the studio, and one of them I'm still friends with and came to my wedding, and they're they're my heroes, you know, but ever such lovely people.

Not that I'm a stalker and we've discussed um the careers issue, haven't we, before, Andy, and how sort of poor it it was. And I'm assuming it's still not brilliant now, but the amount of sort of careers that they've probably, you know, knocked on the head quite quickly. You know, some people might have had the foresight you did to go and write to Ford, or it's amazing, really, isn't it? When you think they just kind of want to push people into a direction that you're not necessarily interested in at all, it's just a bit of a sort of I don't know, like a one size fits all type. You're interested in cars, you've got to be a mechanic or a an engineer.

Yeah, yeah, there is that. And there's also, you know, I was warned many times about how competitive it was and how difficult it was to get a job. And once you're there, I'd be burnt out by the time I was 35 or 40 at least. And um, you know, all these flags were held up and by my dad as well. He thought, well, why do you want to do that? Surely you want to be a doctor or a solicitor or something like that, that um you know is a proper profession. And um I insisted and fair play to my parents, they backed me all the way through. Right. And here we are, yeah, and and I'm I'm still not burnt out.

Right.

And I know I only look 35, and that's one of these.

You take off your father.

That's it, yes.

Yeah, I was discussing my wife the other day about um what our kids might end up doing. I was trying to sort of persuade her to push them towards being an electrician or a plumber or a mechanic just so we can get some you know cheap boiler servicing, that sort of thing.

Or they probably make more money than uh a solicitor nowadays. They probably do, yeah. Have more job security, I should think. Yeah.

So are you still on the tools, so to speak, these days? Are you still doing cars?

Very much so, yes. Yeah, yeah. I've been lucky enough to touch word and never been unemployed. So um, yeah, I've I've been on the tools for 30 years. Nice. I've worked it out, I think in March this year, it was 30 years this year.

Okay, brilliant. And how's that evolved over kind of the years with regards to kind of what the briefs are? Is that is that changing? Is the consumer asking for something different or I guess safety?

Um, it's it depends on who the person I've worked for is, whether it's high or low volume, whether it's custom made or mass production, whether it's interior or exterior, but the I think the overriding themes are especially recently, the last five years, there's been some huge changes in the way software has worked since lockdown actually. And also the the advent of the Chinese um taking over has changed the way that everybody works as well.

Okay.

And those are the two main events I think. I think we've had pretty much 20 years of um being very creative and being allowed some space and freedom. And now in the last five, ten years, the screws are turning, I think.

And do you think the is the aesthetic still as important as it was for for the vehicles?

Yeah, definitely. Everybody buys on the aesthetic as a proportion. Yeah, yeah. And in fact, the interior is getting more important than the exterior.

Fair enough. That's interesting. I can believe that though, because the people that I speak to that do get new cars frequently, they're always tell you about the new features of the inside of the car rather than the exterior. Yeah, that that makes sense.

It's getting there and it's it's changing with everybody who's now able to drive. There's an age group of people that are not so interested in driving or car ownership, and they're not into um so much classic cars or what you might call machines. They're more interested in the tech. And so, you know, what size screen you have on the inside or how the buttons work or the layout of interior and the user experience and user interface is as important in a way as the um aesthetic. And and of course, the exterior is what you know everybody's lured into the vehicle with, and it's still there, still really important, but the others are gaining importance on it, I would say. Interesting.

Yeah, that I guess, yeah, from that point of view. But if you're not into driving, it's about positioning, I suppose, and yeah, how you interact with that, how comfortable is the seat, yeah, how far away is the steering wheel. And yeah, in the same way that if you get given a rubbish mobile phone to operate, you're like, I'm not using that.

Yeah.

Like if you can't find your favorite radio station or turn the air con down, then yeah, it could be the best looking car in the world, but it's going to drive you mad, isn't it?

Exactly. Yeah, yeah. So it's all important. And so the amount of jobs that there are, the amount of job roles that there are have multiplied too, because you know, when I started 30 years ago, there wasn't such a thing as a user interface designer.

No.

Or um, you know, there weren't specialists in headlamp design. design or something like that, because that was done as part of the job. And uh now because the cars are so detailed and have so many features on them, you you get more job roles involving.

Yeah, interesting. And if we go back to I guess the cars you grew up around, are there cars from your childhood which you kind of think actually I'd like to revisit and kind of go back to.

Oh what to to own, you mean, or to Yeah, yeah. Has any of that kind of inspired you like maybe the cars of your parents or uh yeah I mean um I'm so much into classic cars still I mean it's very sad to say that the cars that were new when I was a kid are now classics or you know I've got my ear trumpet somewhere. But um I think the four Sierra is well up there obviously the XR4i with its spide plane rear wings like still knocks the wind out of me when I see one even though it's you know to other people it's probably still very old I don't know it's something I hold on to those everybody has those initial feelings don't they whatever and that that's one of them I think is um a Sierra XR4i.

Interestingly on the XR4i I was never certain on the three side windows. Where do you stand on that from a design point of view?

I know when I was a kid it sort of took me ages to figure it out but um I I think it's genius actually. Okay. I think it's a genius bit of marketing. And you look at the standard Sierra III door that they had on the continent and briefly here, it looked really dull. And all they did was add this extra pillar and a line across that side window and suddenly it became something that you know had the same sort of look as the Mark III escort before it with a quarterlight window and the the same number of windows but a different proportion and and that made it look more sporty I think. Ford were the absolute geniuses back then of making something out of very little.

Yeah yeah I think I guess maybe I looked at it from Cosworth down rather than sort of three door up and you kind of looked at it and you were like oh it's not a Cosworth because it's got the split side window but actually yeah if you looked at it next to a basic L model then or the if the Cosworth never existed yeah it's the fancy one isn't it?

It is and and the Cosworth obviously had you know wings and everything else and skirts and whatever and that that looked different and I really like the fact that uh the Cosworth looked fantastic and is again one of my favourite Sierras especially that Moonstone grey yeah but if they had a an XR4i because it was a decade earlier almost it had that sort of um early 80s tech feel you know like spectrum computers and color all that sort of tech feel sci-fi feel to it and that's what I quite like about it. Yeah yeah it's the first sort of introduction of curves wasn't it really the Sierra and the Granada I think we've discussed this before as well because it was all a little bit boxy before then wasn't it and then it's very fashionable yeah I mean but look at the same time the Gandini did the citron BX and he did that just to be a bit different.

Oh if only we had a pound John yeah normally we put a pound in a jar if someone mentions the citron BX I'll do that as an edit.

I've had three of them so there's three quiz. Oh really brilliant we do like a BX yeah yeah I'm I'm a big citron fan I'm afraid and that's what I learned about these designers at Ford who if you look more and more at these early Fords they all all of the designers had citrons okay they had GSAs and BXs and two C Vs and all of them loved citrons and DSs and so if you look at all these sort of Fords they all quietly influenced by citrons behind the scenes because that's what the designers all drove. I guess the Sierra has got that sort of silhouette similar to a DS isn't it sort of um the jug yeah I think that's down to uh Patrick Lequemo really and the first aerodynamic studies.

Yeah and that was I I probably missed the Sierra being launched but that's what I remember from kind of literature and stuff. It was all about coefficient of drag and aerodynamics and I remember seeing kind of pictures in magazines or books with sort of the wind tunnel sort of ripples going over it etc sort of indicating how slippery it was in comparison to yeah whatever it was that would have been on the forecourt alongside it Montigo or something.

Exactly Volvo Montego I've owned one of those too that was my graduation car I rearranged the badging to me not go on the back of that.

So am I right in thinking you've got something to do with two CVs as well now?

I own one yes. So you've hit the dizzy heights you've got the car to match the poster I have yeah yeah in fact I spoken to uh Steve Cropley about the one he did and the one he turbocharged but um I'm in the middle of restoring one actually okay nice so have you driven it does it kind of live up to or was it never about the drive with regards to the C C Victor um I haven't driven my one I did to my ex-wife's uh annoyance for my 40th birthday she bought me a present of renting a car for the weekend and we got a rent a classic car.

Okay.

And uh on their box was an Austin Healy or an e-type and I think you're going to say what I chose.

She had visions of a wonderful weekend away in a British sports car. I think she did with a scarf on the wire coming out of the back there and you took her across a ploughed field with six eggs on the back seat.

Yeah her lap was wet through the rain coming through the that flat and um this is a family show so I'm not going to say any more about that. And uh it was everything that was bad about a student car I thought at the time but that was quite a while ago now so I've always wanted one and so I had to get it out of my system. I was looking at the prices of them and they're just way higher than I can afford to buy one already done.

Yeah.

So that's why I'm restoring one.

Are they expensive to restore if you pick one up as a wreck?

They're not really no um if you go onto YouTube you can find videos by a Dutch company of how to build one from scratch you can actually buy every single spare and you can build a brand new one.

Exactly away you go yeah not IKEA fantastic um I don't know whether did we ask you about your neighbours obviously you lived on a slightly peculiar pay road junction so um did you have neighbours or were you sort of on an island just surrounded by traffic?

No we we were um we only had one set of neighbours obviously the other one was the pointy bit of land with a bit of woodland on it um and lots of cat graves but on the other direction was a filling station which was also a scimitar garage.

Okay.

And that was a filling station when I was a young kid and then later on uh we had the pleasure of living next door to scrapyard and that's what it turned into yeah.

Okay. And any memories from cars turning up there? I guess Scimitars, yeah.

Just scimitars, those of them yeah the owner had a scimitar or had one every year and they they were absolutely amazing. So I used to love those as well.

And obviously yeah mentioned Scimitar how did you end up getting involved with Reliant?

Was that just a regular regular that's just the gig that came up no I was made redundant from my first job and uh back in the day before internet I went to the library and got out the um I can't remember the name of them are but their books where every company in the UK was listed.

Okay.

And I went through the book and I wrote them all down and I applied alphabetically to every company and Reliant was the first one to reply.

Goodness that's some perseverance what else do you do?

Yeah so uh yeah I'd already been in in a job then by three years so I wanted to continue and so Reliant was the next one and they were looking for um a designer right at the same time I think it was just the point in the history when um they had been taken over by Jonathan Haynes who was one of the last owners of Reliant so um that was a historic time I was lucky enough to apply at the right time with yeah yeah nice and how long were you there? A year. Oh okay and that was it um the company was very tumultuous and I found the whole thing really quite stressful but I did four complete car projects full size in that year as a 24 year old, 25 year old wow and um I was really stressed and I also knew that I needed to learn to digital model and modelling out a body filler and foam to the budgets of thousands not hundreds of thousands for a car project or even tens of thousands was not the way forward for my career. So I went back to uni after that.

Okay.

It's it's been a really interesting roller coaster ride up to now lots of different companies and different sorts of companies different uh volumes of manufacture and stuff like that and have you got a favourite vehicle you've done or been involved with apart from the reliant robin that was as a designer I've also learnt to be a digital modeler which is what I do.

Okay.

If you cut me in half I'm literally 50% designer and 15% 3D modeler for a job. Yeah and I love doing them both they're both integral in the design process and so as a model maker um I was at Morgan and I think we got out the Super 3. Okay and that's another of my favorites and uh I'm really proud of that and an amazing small team and between us we got out Super 3 which is fantastic.

Is that your um I guess you're sort of chosen the sort of low volume does that give you more freedom as as a designer if you're working with sort of low volume stuff rather than a a big no I I think it's different it's different.

Low volume is freedom because you can take more autonomy in what you're doing I suppose but you still have a design manager or the director of the company is up to them what happens at the end whichever company you're in. Yeah I don't know I've I've been involved in some major programs for Volkswagen as well and have the same amount of autonomy with my theme on an interior or something. So I don't think it gives you any more freedom. The regulations and the production techniques are what limit you and budget and the imagination of the director or the market research depending on what your brief is as well.

Yeah fair enough cool well um yeah thank you very much for joining us Andy that's between yeah good good to hear about the uh the cars from your past and also yeah a bit about your career as well because it's especially for myself as kind of a kid growing up wanting to draw cars it's sort of fascinating to hear from someone who's done it. So uh yeah.

Well my pleasure it's been it's been great fun. Thanks very much for having me.

Thanks Andy nice to meet you bye bye. Take care guys cheers Andy bye. Thank you Doki there we go nice nice insight into car design.

Yeah I think it was it's um from an episode point of view it sort of started a bit slow didn't it on the um family cars. Yeah maybe it took a little bit of time for him to warm up to that but um yeah yeah it did a little bit but no it's it was good in the end wasn't it yeah yeah I think so enjoyed it it's interesting good insight into uh that line of work yeah like I say yeah that that was what I wanted to do as a kid my exercise books were full of kind of car drawings and something I looked as doing I applied for an apprenticeship at Day when I was really 15, 16, yeah. And um because literally they were pretty much at the top of my road where I live now and um they were based there. Quite new in the UK at that point. I think that was 992000. But actually they ended up n never recruiting anyone on that plan because they ended up kind of folding sort of shortly after. Right. But um yeah that was as close as I got to be honest but I wasn't up to scratch. You look at designers such as Andy or kind of other people and you think that yeah their drawings are something else.

Yeah mine definitely weren't that but I kind of think you have to have like some sort of natural flair don't you perhaps for that line of you can be good but yeah I suppose like you say you need to be sort of next level good don't you to get anywhere with it I suppose.

Yeah I guess the difference between someone who's kind of good at football in the playground and always in the starting 11 and um yeah I guess a similar story with that. But yeah some nice stories I guess reassuring to hear that was his his father took a punt on the uh car auctions but actually had the the knowledge to back it up rather than just I guess some people would sort of follow the uh oh I just but I guess eBay's a little bit like that isn't it or I can get this for for cheap.

Yeah but yeah when it goes wrong. At least at the auction you can usually have a little walk around can't you whereas eBay majority of the time you probably don't go and view do you just take a punt and if it's got panel gaps and tobaccos now you just accept it yeah yeah absolutely I suppose yeah caravanning is another one which um yeah I grew up with yeah yeah frustrating I suppose from their point of view that yeah dad's driving around at these big old Fords but they're turning a caravan with a Morris traveller but yeah such was life I guess back then that uh yeah yeah you can't do anything to the company car can you no in the same way that yeah you can't paint it a funny colour.

Yeah exactly yeah same thing isn't it now yeah so yeah nice to yeah nice to hear those stories and obviously yeah touch on the reliant thing as well in being involved with that project and um yeah thank you to Andy for joining us. Yeah thank you very much John we'll uh yeah we'll wrap it up roll the credits thank you for listening to my last part I hope you enjoyed the show please support us a coffee and subscribe and tell all your friends