Jez Hayter - Mythron Cars: Grandfather’s Wolsley, Norway in a Renault 18, 3 door Range Rover and building Austin Healey Sebring Sprites for the modern day. S7 E4

Welcome to my car.

Welcome to my data car. And you know what? It doesn't even have to be a public data car. It could be your mom, your grand, your dad, daughter, or even if it made an impression. Let's talk about it. Oh. How are you doing, Jez? You're right. Good? You? Yeah. Not too bad.

Hi Jess. Nice to meet you. Hi John. How are we doing? Alright?

Yeah. Okay. Thank you. How are you doing? Alright? Yeah, good. Good. Cool. We will start. For the benefit of the tape, we're joined by Jez Hater, who is the man behind Mithron Cars, which I came across on Instagram. I think it's he'll probably correct me in just a second. Either MG Midget or Austin Healy Sprite, sort of resto mod type recreation. Is that correct, Jez?

Yeah, it is uh Austin Healy. Okay. Mark 1 Austin Healy. So frog eyes that are converted into what was the racing cars used by Sterling Moss and Steve McQueen at Seaglo.

Okay, also proper sort of heritage in there, some some big names. 100%.

That's key to it, is retaining the heritage in the brand within the boundaries of a term that I don't prefer, which is resto mods personally. Apologies.

But it is a restored modified car.

Yeah.

So ultimately you're correct.

And it's just um what could we do to a vehicle that gets them on the road? That more people see the shape of a car, which is extremely unique. So we have the molds that were taken from the original car, and you can operate them every day of the week. If it's raining, the windscreen wipers actually work. Yeah. And the washer jets work. And you know, we have four pot brakes on them, so they do stop.

Nice.

Yeah, we have the same original engine that's completely rebuilt. And that was really the passion piece for me. Was actually, I fell in love with the shape of the car and said we need these on the road.

Yeah, yeah. So without giving too much away, because we'll come to that in a second, is there a historical link for yourself between those cars and why you've kind of gone into that rather than doing a whatever it might be, uh a Volkswagen or a Porsche or something?

So I have quite an interesting background in cars that range from ultra modern, you know, the BMW I 8 to Series 2A Land Rovers. I think I've always wanted to play around with the car and put my own brand on it, my own mark, whatever that might be, if it's changed the seats, if it's repaint the car, what have you. But again, keeping honest to to what the brand is that you're working with. Yeah. And so I probably having had, I think we totaled up 28 cars in a 21-year history of driving. Because I learned to drive very late on. I only drove a car when I was 30.

Oh wow. Okay.

Yeah, because having moved to London, travelling around London in a car is very hard. And and you wouldn't normally have parking or you wouldn't normally have the need for it. So motorbikes were my thing.

Yeah, it makes sense.

So 100%. I cut my teeth on a 1972 BSA Bantam, which is probably most lethal weapon you could ever have in central London. Drum brakes. Um, but it was great fun riding down the A3 to the rugby club, and you know, everyone's in their lovely fancy motorbikes. Very short-lived, but I did donate that to my father because that was the first motorbike he ever had.

Okay.

And that stayed in the family until pretty much about 14 months ago. And then we moved it on. But yeah, two wheels were always when I grew up. I mean, as probably a lot of kids, so I'm 51 years old. When I was a young Jack, you played with um, you know, Lego, you played with Action Man.

Yeah.

So my induction into the four-wheeled world would have been the sort of geek or the tank that would be Action Man, and you would spend hours and hours just, you know, you wouldn't modify them, but you might paint them, but you would just play with these in a tiny little patch of garden in the back of your house, and it was it was phenomenal. Yeah. I have a 15-year-old and 13-year-old, and I tell them you're really missing out on something, you know, when they were younger. And and we had the usual photographs of Porsches and Lamborghinis and that. I think with the engineering and my feeling of wanting to build things, I've always had a passion for vehicles. And it could be tractors, you know, my uncle's farm, looking at the mechanized world and thinking a tractor could perform a gazillion of different things. How amazing that you can do that in one vehicle, right? Yeah, yeah. It's it's phenomenal technology. Okay.

Yeah, cool. So yeah, we we start all of these episodes the same and then we kind of just go off on a tangent, really take where it takes us. So what's your earliest car memory or earliest motoring memory we can preface that with?

So if it wasn't the action man pushing long vehicles, I think so. My grandfather had a I think it was called a Wolvesley. Okay, right. So that is a sort of saloon car. But I imagine in that period, so mid-70s, right? It was about comfort. It wasn't about performance, it was about sitting in the back of your car and there was a fold-down table, which almost had an impression for a plate, a knife, and a fork. Yeah, it was really weird. It was about having that enjoyment and that feeling of you can go and picnic somewhere else because travel was quite new in that period, right? Flying was was rare. So actually, the way they pitched it, I imagine, was put your hamper in the boot of the car, take your car to this amazing place because you can now drive 50 miles an hour, whatever it is, and you can eat on the back while you're traveling. And you know, phenomenal. We'll go full circle, it'll all come back, Tesla's, whatever, right? They'll they'll have it at some point. But in terms of my first memories of motoring, seeing that car, being super excited my grandfather could afford a car, even right, in that era, having been an army guy riding horses. Yeah, that's probably my earliest memory.

Do you recall what colour it was?

Oh, like uh flat grey, which was quite indicative with a sort of tan leather interior. Now it'd be super cool, right? It would be one of those Porsche vintage colours or something, you know. And I I guess I get a bit nostalgia if I tried to find that car and buy one for my father. Okay. Because obviously he would have been more closely linked to it, couldn't find one anywhere, you know, was worth doing it if it wasn't pristine. So I went down the motorbike route instead. But and again, I think so. My father was in the Navy and my mother, so they travelled a lot. So having a mechanized vehicle wasn't required. But my dad's first car that I do remember, which was phenomenal, was actually a Renault estate car. Oh right. So Renault 18 estate car, I remember the number ORD646X.

Nice.

And we shipped it to Norway where we lived, and then we had it in Norway. And you've got to remember, right, this is a period with no seat belts. And you take it out to Norway where it's generally snowy. No one had chains, just bought these tyres that had spikes in them. And you know, if you broke down, you phoned your mate, he came along and took your family off your hands, and you kind of worked out how to get it back. Yeah. And that was such a great period of life where you just had to just think for yourself and get on with it. And we traveled, so so three of us in the back of the car, plus my mother and father in the front, with all of our stuff to go and live in Norway for two years. Wow. Wow. And when we left, came back through Sweden, Denmark, Holland, back into the UK. So a proper road trip on the way back. Um, I'd have been nine years old probably. So I'd remember the seats had a bead that ran down the side of the seat. It was like uh an extra in the spec of the car. Yeah. And as a seven-year-old, I used to chew on it just to get through the boredom of being in the back of a car. And I remember that now, and I keep telling my children how lucky you are that A, you've got seat belts, but also, you know, we have these more modern vehicles. But that car was absolutely phenomenal. And then on its last legs, I think it was 185,000 miles. Jeez. My father found some guys who wanted to buy it, and I said, Look, I was what I was 11, I couldn't afford it. I said, Look, I'm going to sell it, keep it because of the history of the car. Sold it to a couple of lads, and the next day it was burnt out on the side of a street.

Oh no.

And all of that memory, all of that history had gone. And that was extremely sad. Yeah. But a great nod to Renault because that was a phenomenal piece of kit.

Do you have any idea of what made your dad plump for the Renault, Jess?

Do you know what? I think um it's a very good question. Size, without a doubt, because we weren't really into four by fours unless you had a series Land Rover at the time. Um, a new brand. I mean, Crikey, in the mid-70s, I'd imagine Renault coming to the UK was a new big thing, right? I don't know when they did come. No, I don't know. So maybe my dad, he's always had Renault's and CATs, and you know, he's never gone down the route of Land Rover and BMW and all those sort of brands that we have as a family. And I wonder whether he just liked that sort of calendar approach, right? Let's go with a brand that we'll see what happens. And you know, he stuck with Renault's forever and again and got a Clio. Clio was an amazing car when it came out until my sister parked it in the garage wall, not in the actual garage. Yeah, that one didn't uh didn't carry on. But uh yeah, maybe that again driving wasn't his thing. Motorbikes he loved, but it wasn't like we could share that as a passion. Yeah. So I had to develop it myself. My brother loved, we used to ride motorbikes together everywhere. He was a huge motorcyclist.

Okay.

But yeah, I think again, that as a second sort of nod to cars, that Renault, you know, with all the hours we sat in that car, I've got a lot of history in there.

So is the three of you in the back with your brother and your sister, who got the middle seat? What was it like in the back?

Me, always. You was it? Yeah, I loved it. Are you the youngest? So I'm the youngest by two years, and then my sister's another two years older than that. Yeah. But the middle seat was the optimal seat because you got the view, you could chew the side of the chair, you could, you know, keep my sister and brother apart from each other. Keep the peace. Probably most dangerous if we crashed.

Yeah.

But we didn't do that. It's good to hear. Was there any sort of entertainment in the car? Do you have a radio or a tape player in there? Or what would be playing? Cassette player.

Cassette player. And do you know what? It would have been. My dad was massively into Barkley James Harvest at the time, which I think a lot of people did in the 70s.

Okay.

ABBBA then was big in the 80s when we lived in Norway.

Yeah, yeah.

You know, we all grew up with ABBA. Less sort of rock and roll, but I think rock music came back in as we got older.

Yeah.

And actually, so my father passed away probably two years ago.

Okay.

And being a typical military person, they never talk about if he was at the Falklings War, right? They never talk about it. No. No one talks about the stuff. So I'm having to unearth all of this now, going through photographs, going through videos, and yeah, to your point, I didn't know what music Dad listened to on the big sort of reel to reel, you know, as well as records. And now you start to see he actually might have been actually quite cool back in the day. Because we never think our parents are cool at the time, right? It's always later on. Yeah, I think in the car, take decks, ABBA, you know, bit of rock now and then.

I think those sort of things, John and I have both lost our bothers as well. You do sort of take some of that for granted, don't you? You don't you don't almost really know your parents until you're kind of an adult stage, probably. And then for both of us, I guess, and also for yourself, there's so much more you could have found out when in your head you're probably then prepared or you're sort of interested in that history. Yeah. And you then kind of start having to do that sort of archaeological dig almost, sort of going through old photographs or bits like that to go, oh, actually, yeah, I didn't know they were into that.

Yeah, and you know what, I think with a military connection as well, you know, I started to dig out these photographs where dad was, I don't know, dance champion in Singapore for his little group of guys, right? And I'm like, that's so cool. I remember dad playing dance a bit at home. I didn't realise that he'd won the dance, right? Or I used to play a good level of hockey and play football for his, I don't know what you call it, for his like division of the Navy. And I try and inspire my children that they can achieve what they want to do. And my dad had always said to me, Go and explore, go and do this, because maybe that's why we went to New York, because he said, look, go and do it now, it's the right time. That spurred me on when he passed away to do the car piece. Yeah. Because it has always been something I've wanted to do. And I keep telling the kids, do you think granddad would have liked it? You know, what we've done. And no doubt he probably is quite proud of us. Yeah, and and I I tell my wife whose parents are still alive, you've got to spend as much time as you can with them and and enjoy those things if it is driving cars together or whatever it is. But um, yeah, he definitely inspired me to do the Mithron thing, which didn't start as Mithron, it started as me building what I felt was the optimal car for me to drive.

Okay. Just while we're talking about Mithron, is that sort of a hands-on project for you? Is that you in your garage making it, or are you working with a team, or you kind of came up with a vision and found a restorer or a mechanic or something who sort of brought that to life?

Yes, so probably just after Dad passed away, I might have bought it actually while he's still alive. I bought an old Austin Healy race car. Okay. And when I started to take it apart, I thought this is a hell of a lot easier than taking apart of new 9-11 or a Land Rover, maybe not so much a Land Rover. Of which I've had all of these cars. So I thought, could I improve this car for the road? So I basically set about going to all these various amateur race series in the UK and meeting people that race these cars and look after cars for gentlemen drivers, I'll call them, right? Yeah. And having spoken to them about what would you do to make it optimal as a road car versus a road and track car? Yeah. And just gathered all of this intelligence and just gathered all this information and said, right, if I took every bit from suspension to brakes to interior to lighting, and I put it all together, could we create something that actually I've always pitched it that a 25-year-old upward could look at and say, that was cool, then ask what it is, yeah, and then realize it's a traditional British brand. Could we do this? So we could have gone down the route of, you know, Steve McQueen has always been an idol of mine. I've read his books, I've watched his movies, I think he's a cool guy. The connection with Austin McGealy in this particular car was important for me, probably more so than Sterling Moss, although he gives it the sort of legitimacy and the gravitas, right? The cool bit comes from Steve McQueen. Yeah. Sorry, just to answer your point then. So I employed the knowledge of these various teams and said, right, how can we build what would be the optimal braking solution, but staying within the classic car genre rather than rebuild McPherson strut suspension and put it in the car, which then makes it look like a kit car.

Yeah, yeah.

And you take on board this you know, these guys have got so much knowledge, and they've seen what's been done in the past, and they've seen how the marketplace has said, don't do that because it looks like a kit car. And so by taking all that on board, I probably manage more of the team and the design process because every car is 100% custom to that owner. Yeah, yeah. Whether the dial clock faces carry their name in them, whether you know the carpets are a certain colour, you know, we give variations. I love that part of the process. Okay. Do I like getting the fanners out and doing the nuts and bolts? Yeah, 100%. That mechanical feeling of achieving something is phenomenal. And when we built the first one, it was on the NEC on the Austin Healy Club sand, which amazed me because I said, guys, it's not a concourse vehicle. This is a vehicle that's nut and bolt brand new, using an original chassis, but it's different. And they said, This is what we need. We need people to say, you can do this, yeah, yeah. Alpha Holix do Alpha Romeo's, Sigma do the Porsches. And everybody came over. And the funny bit is it had carbon fiber tinnit seats in it, and everybody's like, Oh, I didn't know you could put carbon fiber seats in a classic car. And I'm like, Yeah, you can achieve anything you want, you know. But everyone's very visual in today's world, I believe. And they want to see it. And so by sharing it, you know, that's when we thought, well, maybe there's something in this, we can produce more of them. And we're now on car number four at the moment, which is great. Amazing. So um, if it can get a full-time job, then great, you know, love to do it. Um, part of it was my my youngest son, and and if they do listen to this, they're hoping for this. My youngest son said to me, What have you ever achieved? Because his peers have parents that are builders or lawyers or architects, and they have a tactile object when they do this. Yeah, yeah, you can hold it in your hand. Yeah. Or a doctor who mentions somebody, right? Having run a creative agency, I can say, Well, look, if you go to central London and you see the Putney Wharf logo, that's my logo. Half the logos that we developed for Canary Wharf, I help create. They don't get it. They just don't get it. A website, yeah, you know, a membership website for 7,000 people. No, don't get it, Daddy. It's not cool. So by taking them to the garage and unveiling this car, and actually my youngest thing, actually, that does look quite cool. You're like, Oh, finally, I've ticked the right bots.

God forbid, I'll get asked that question.

It's hard because I did say we've got a lovely family, two lovely boys, two dogs, you know, and and we we live a comfortable life, although we work very hard. And I said, You wait till you achieve that, young man. You know, see if you can do it.

On that note, this morning I showed my um eldest daughter a copy of a magazine that I'd written an article for. I only got the copy the other day, it came out earlier in the month, but that was quite nice. Like she was flicking through it, and then she's like, Look, it's got your name here. I was like, Yeah, and I wrote all of that, and yeah, that that sort of yeah, something tangible in your hands, quite quite a nice I think it's important, you know, those tactile physical things you can build.

Whatever it is, if it's decking in your garden, if it's putting the furniture together that's in your back garden, right? I think people underestimate the sense of value you get when you complete it, you know. Yeah, in all these things, when you're in this industry of the motor world, right? Everybody does things differently.

Yeah.

So you have to really take that on board. And you're naive, but you can't be naive. Does that make sense? Because I think you learn as you go, but you also have to give the impression you know what you're talking about, which which we do know what we're talking about. Um I'm talking about 18 months ago, two years ago. Because you want to extract the best you can out of these bright minds. You want them to open up and say, look, I'd do it this way, because the way the car was rolled off the production line in 1960 is not how it should be driven now. Yeah, yeah. And I actually had a 9-11 3.2 Carrera Sport, the one that had the whale tail on the back in guard spread, I bought from a chat. And the moment I got it, I took it to a company in Crawley who have a Porsche Cut race team. Okay. And I said, I know this car is not quite right for modern driving. What do you do? And they flipped the bonnet up. And when the cars came out of Stuttgart back in that era, they put a sort of molasses over the front of the suspension mounts. Okay. Right away, the guy gets a chisel and a hammer out and he's hammering off this. I'm like, Oh, what are you doing to my car? You know, this is my no, no, Jess, we've got to get to the suspension mounts because the biggest problem is basically not dialing the suspension in on the car. And they spent a day on this car, came down to Goodwood, which is close to where I live, and I drove the car around and I said, Guys, what you've done to this car is phenomenal. They said, We don't need to play with the engine, we don't need to play the carburetor, you know, suspension's where it's at. Tiff Nadell drove it around, and he came out saying, This is the most organized 9-11 I've ever driven. Fantastic. And I said, Well, that's great. At least I know the guys have done a good job. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, of course he's trying to get the car sideways on the corner, and I'm having a heart attack in there thinking it's gonna snap. But I think it's important to play around with it. Make them your own. Yeah, definitely.

So if we go back to Norway then, yeah. Do you recall, yeah, neighbours or teachers or something like that who had kind of cars of interest? Do you remember the first car which kind of piqued your interest as an interesting car?

Yeah, do you know what? I don't know what series it would be. Maybe I think they call it something like the Series B Range Rover. Okay. Uh it wouldn't have even been a vogue. It would have been a series B. So three door powder blue, manual Range Rover with a Kind of like tanvalure interior. Nice. Super cool. Now like gold dust. And it used to be our really good friends, you had children in my school, because we were in an international school. And that car could go anywhere, right? Not like I used low range or anything like that. It would just go anywhere. And I do remember that because we just rolled around in it. You know, it's such a big car with, I guess it would have been air suspension back in those days. I don't know that model very well. But I just remember, again, in Norway, you'd have three people in the back seat. You'd have six or seven because we're only seven years old. There were no rules because there were no seat belts. So it was like a school bus. Yeah, that definitely sits with me as to, you know, dad having the Renault sensible car with the skis on the dock. And then our friend coming around, and I'm like, that is a very cool bit of kit, because it's big.

Yeah. And unique at that point as well, because there wasn't anything like it, was there? Especially in Norway.

I mean, right-hand drive car on English plates. Yeah. And that's again, you know, is that maybe something why we dabble with our cars? Because we don't want it to look like someone else's car.

No.

And that's what we're doing a lot more now with all the brands doing customization. I was in a corshi's paint room the other day. And they said, we now ask you to come with a picture of something you like, and we will make your car that colour, you know, your handbag. And they'll scan it, and then they'll say, Right, that's gonna be this colour. I mean, it's brilliant that yeah, you'll get some people who like performance looks, whatever some people who say, I just want it white, or I just want it green. Yeah. More choice, I suppose. Yeah, like being cute, isn't it? Yeah. But if you look at historically now, how these big brands have moved, they've resurrected their classic marks, Porsche specifically, opening up the original machine tooling to make the original panels now.

Yeah.

You're only going to do that if you know there's demand. And that is phenomenal. Land Rover doing customization now, so you can go to Land Rover Custom, and that's not just sort of SVR group, do it super sporty. These are people that say, look, you know what, if you want a vintage Land Rover with TV screens in the back, we can put I think it's brilliant. I think maybe technology has allowed that personalization. We can 3D print things now quicker, we can produce products more efficiently. So we we go into that customization world, and and it's great. I was at Retro Rides, which is quite a unique event in Goodwood. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And we had our car on the track down there. And what I loved was that some young lad who was maybe 16, who just got his car at 17, even, was so wrapped up in this sort of Fiat Uno style car and wanting to make it his own if it's loud pipes, if it's painting it, if it's wrapping it. He had as much, if not more, passion for that vehicle than a 40-year-old in their Ferrari. And I thought that is very powerful that people want to tinker and make it their own.

Yeah, yeah, definitely. I think um it goes back, I suppose, a little bit to like you mentioned Lego earlier. That's kind of as a child, that's what you would do, wouldn't it? You'd sort of start with your wheels and then you'd make it and you'd make it your colour and in that style, or that would be the picture you draw in your textbooks at school. And then you're when you're an adult, whether that's kind of a 17-year-old with your first car, or you're kind of yeah, 50 or whatever, and you're building an Austin Healy sprite, you can then kind of go back to that and go, actually, I'm gonna put these wheels on it, or I'm gonna have it this colour, and I'm gonna put these seats in because you are sort of reliving those sort of early memories, if you like.

Yeah. Do you know what MasterCard did an amazing activation at Festival Speed a few years back when we were getting into sustainability in the environment? I don't know if you ever saw it, but in their future lab, they invited young children to design their perfect car. Okay. For example, when their really young children were putting square wheels on it. Yeah. And then they were learning, you know, that's not practical, really. Bad move. It's gonna be a bumpy ride, right? Tires are expensive. Yeah. So what they did, which was phenomenal, is they took the winning design and they physically made the car.

Yeah.

And it was a young lad, and he said, Yeah, so I've got fans on the back. And they're like, Oh my god, it's like the fan car of Gordon Murray. And he's like, Oh no, no, no. This sucks all the bad air out of the car and then sucks in good air. And we're like, that's cool. And then he said, the most important bit is making sure that you've got ice creams. And we're all like, What do you mean? What do you mean? So in the center console where the gear stick normally would is the three slots for three kind of 99 ice creams, right? And he said, Yeah, you've always got to have three ice creams there, just in case. So, of course, when MasterCard built this, they built a life-size version and had it on display. Yeah, and then they built a smaller model for him to take away. But every child, every parent pretty much who saw this past said, that's perfect. You know, we need that on the road because you know, why not? And no one was bothered about what if the ice creams melted. He's like, they'll be eaten before they melt. He almost had an answer for everything because they're not constructive, right? They don't have the same concerns we do, where we would look at the financial implications, the health and safety. They're like, no way, it's all about what's cool and that will be online somewhere, I think, but a genius MasterCard activation there, you know, absolutely brilliant.

Do you know who did that, Jez? Which agency produced it from us?

Octagon. Okay, yeah. So we we help Octagon with some of the activations for MasterCard.

Right, okay.

I don't know whether that was pre-COVID, just after COVID. Right. But um it was it was brilliant, honestly. You you look it up, it was a it was a great bit of inspiration for anybody. And actually I've told them they should use it as a case study for young kids doing sort of design and technology at school.

Yeah.

You know, just to show them it. Because, you know, don't forget there were two or three hundred other designs that were fantastic. It's just maybe this was the most outrageous of the one.

Yeah, they would have been carefully considered, wouldn't they? And uh you want to choose some headlines, the car with the ice cream holder.

Yeah. Makes complete sense, doesn't it?

Well, but again, you know, the chat wasn't bothered about how it's powered. Just do it.

Yeah. Yeah.

I don't care if it's got motors or, you know, if it's the V8 engine. It was about going back to the Wolseley thing, right? It was about the creature comfort being in that vehicle than the performance of it. Yeah. And that was key for him and that age group, as it was for me, thinking this is a cool car, not because of how it looked, but because I could eat my dinner on the table on the back seat, because I was seven years old. So that was the best thing ever. Do you remember doing day trips and things in that car at the Walsley? No, no. Do you know what? I think in that era, I would imagine my grandfather was probably too nervous of something happening. You know, my other grandfather took my sister for a drive in his Volvo. He had one of those sort of compact Volvo things.

Okay.

And no seat belts, door open going round and round about. She rolled out onto the road. Oh, Christ. And uh, yeah, she's fine. She thought it was hilarious. And um and we do laugh about it now and then, but of course, you know, in today's era, there would have been 20 other cars on that roundabout. Yeah, yeah. In that period, you know, I don't even know what the stats were about how many cars were on the road. It was so privileged to own a vehicle that they just weren't there.

Sheesh, that's mad, isn't it? We spoke to a guy up at the NEC a couple of years ago who spoke about that and he fell out the back of his mum's car, but she didn't realise. So he was at the side of the road for five, ten minutes while she drove to the next village, went to get him out, and then he wasn't there. She had to go back and get him.

Oh, I love that. I love that. Do you know what? I would I'll tell you a very funny story, but it's not really well, it's all car related. Okay. I bumped into a dog trainer who was training dogs, and we were sort of taking our dog along to say, look, you know, could you train her? And she said, Oh, I'll turn you into a funny story, Jez. She said, I'd asked the dogs to sit and stay, loaded all the dogs in the car, although what she thought were in the car, drove home a mile, suddenly realized I'm one dog short. No, went back to the field, and the dog's still sitting there, hasn't moved a bone. And she said, Okay, the training is working.

Yeah, give that dog a treat.

Well, so obviously we don't name names because she's very good, but you know, that happens, right?

That's almost the perfect advert for her dog company, isn't it? That would work perfectly. Yeah, do you know what?

Yeah, so in the same way that maybe you wouldn't employ Jesse's grandfather as a taxi driver.

Maybe it's okay now, you've got seatbelts, you can strap them in. Child locks, yeah. Yeah, child logs, right? 100%. Yeah. And even now, all of these, we did a bit of work with the cycling fraternity and their lobbying of Uber taxis to have these sort of alerts in the car. So when the door is opened, it can realise there is a cyclist coming up next year, which is really good. So, with the amount of people in central London being knocked off their bikes by people swinging taxi doors open, yeah. I think some of the London cabs have deployed this mechanism that it will give them alert, which is phenomenal. But unfortunately, it's come from accidents rather than people being preventative and saying, let's think about this in advance.

I guess a lot of that that that's how seat belts came about, wasn't it? And the same with like through motorsport, like a Halo device, etc., as all because of accidents, and someone goes, We can make that a bit better. And indicators, right? First cars didn't have indicators.

No. So it was hand signals, and you know, then I think some cars still don't have indicators, Justin. I'm uh we don't have to stalk inside to move them, do they? Right. But you know, Morris minor then invented the indicator that came out of the B pillar of the door, right? So they flipped up and then they flash purely because someone realized if people can anticipate your turning, yeah, you won't drive into the back of them. No. And that's progression, right? And ironically, when we build these little cars now, we don't build them with the knowledge that we'll only put in them what you got in the 60s. Yeah. So we'll include the reversing light, because actually, for modern standards, we should have a reversing light in there.

I think one of the most recent advancements that I've noticed seems to have happened overnight as well, is the one where you're in the outside lane and you get close to the car on the inside lane, you see in their wing mirror the little blind spot thing coming up. I don't know what it's called, but it's quite reassuring to see it, and you think, well, you shouldn't be putting out on me in this case, so I'll just keep going where I'm going.

But I think it's saved a number of lane changes. I bet it has. And actually, so my wife worked in Munich for a year, so she took me back to Munich for a weekend to show me all the various bars and things she went to. And when we left the hotel to get into the taxi, it was the Mercedes-Benz with the door open. This was just about the period where lane control was being launched and all these things, and even some form of automated driving. So we came down and thought, great, put our bags in the boot of this car, got into the back, the door shut, chap gets in the car and off we drive. Uh, Munich to the airport is sort of dual carriageways, bit of motorway.

Yeah.

This guy is hammering it down the road, like giving it beans. Then he's taking his hands off the wheel, and Laura and I are like, What are you doing? What are you doing? You know, and Germans do tend to drive, right, quite quickly. Yeah. And he then says, Oh, it's brilliant, it won't change lanes. And we're like, Oh my god, this is scary. Right, you know, we've just got to get to the airport. So then he kind of pulls into a lane and then it automatically took him back. And he went, Oh my god, this car is amazing. And we're like, Oh my, you know, we're not gonna make it, we're not gonna make it. Pull up to the taxi rank, we get out and we're like, look, how much do we owe you? And he said, You don't owe me anything. This is not my car. And I said, Hang on, you're the taxi driver. He said, No, my friend said, This is my new car. Take it round the building, see what you think. You got in it, so I thought, well, I may as well take you to the airport.

So he driven us to the airport and was testing out the car because he had no idea what he was doing. And Laura and I said, We're not paying for this. But it was brilliant. He loved it, and he said, Oh, what an amazing car.

And um, he just assumed we knew that he, you know, by shutting all the doors and getting in, that that that's what you did, you know. Because I noticed the meter wasn't on. And uh we'd still laugh about that 15 years on, you know, because uh what a great experience. But again, the technology at its best at that time, you know, Mercedes Benz leading the way.

Yeah, I assume that the lane change notification is probably coined in the S class, wasn't it, or something, as most of the tech usually well it used to be, probably not anymore.

Yeah, to some degree.

Yeah, fantastic, good stories.

Yeah, thank you very much for joining us, Jess. It's been uh good fun. We've had a bit of uh family history and uh yeah, a bit about the cars you're building and some technology and advertising stories as well, which has been great. Yeah, pleasure.

Thanks guys for inviting me on.

No problem at all. Thank you very much for joining us. It's been good fun. Thanks, Jess. Thanks, guys. See you later.

Cool. There we go. Interesting.

Yeah, it was interesting, wasn't it? We had a we had a bit of parents' cars in there and grandparents. But yeah, interesting to hear obviously about the project he's building and uh his background as well.

Yeah. It's interesting to get an insight into um projects like that, isn't it? Well, it is for me because I'm you know, this is kind of my uh only avenue to the mitering world, really. It's not like I read up about it anywhere else. So speaking to these sort of people does sort of enlighten me on a lot of things.

No, yeah, it is it is interesting. Um yeah, the car, the car that he's produced is yeah, it's cool. It's a cool little thing. And as we've said so many times, like this nostalgia stuff, people wanting to kind of relive those kind of older memories, or just driving something which is low-tech and does connect them with the road and sort of brings back the need to sort of be more hands-on, yeah, less kind of driving aids, etc. Yeah, yeah, there is a call for that, and potentially like the product he's producing, maybe it's it's a step between the normal average car and maybe like the custom Stinger Porsche or whatever, because it's not based on a Porsche. Yeah, I'm not sure what they retail at, but the Stingers aren't cheaper then. No, well Stingers are yeah, millions, I think. So uh yeah, I don't think the Microdon cars um yeah to that extent, but yeah, I don't know what the price ticket is. Yeah. Okay, cool. Thank you very much, John. Pleasure. Wrap it up, roll the credits.

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