Nathan Tregonning - Mental Health Car Club: My Grandad had a Sierra Cosworth S6E8

Welcome to my dad's car, Enjoy.

Welcome to My Dad's Car, a podcast discussing our personal relationship with automated myself. And you know what? It doesn't even have to be about your dad's car. It can be your mum's, your grands, your parents, girls, or even a neighbour's. If it made an impression, let's talk about it.

Hello? And then you want me? I'm okay. Yourself? Yeah, I'm good, thank you.

Not too bad at all. Wonderful.

Not too bad. Yeah.

Thank you very much for joining us.

You're very welcome.

Nice to meet you, Nathan. You are mate. We're good, yeah. Meet my friend Paul, who might be up there down there. He's been in the hot seat. Um, I'm just trying to find out when we had you on, Paul.

Oh, it was a while ago now, mate. You right, Nathan? Yeah, I'm alright, mate. Yeah, all good, mate. All good. Good. Well, that must have been about a year. No, eight months.

Here we go. Yeah, season five, episode one. October the 15th, we put it out. But yeah, we probably spoke a month or two before that. So um, yeah, welcome along to you both. We'll do a quick intro so um regular listeners will notice that uh you won't hear the dulcet tones of John today because he's tied up with something else. But very fortunately, we've got uh Paul Gardner from Speedbook, who was the star of season five, episode one, um, who's joined us. So thank you very much, Paul. Very welcome. Invoicing the post. And today we are joined by Nathan from the Mental Health Car Club. So welcome along, Nathan.

Hey Mate, nice to be here. Thank you for having me.

So yeah, we'll start with a quick bit about what you do, really, a kind of opportunity for you to have a plug, and then we'll kind of jump into it. So, yeah, what's the mental health car club all about? Guess the answers on the tin, but kind of give us a quick rundown, yeah, what it's about, why it started, maybe.

Yeah, no problem. Um, it was born really out of my own personal journey. Um, I suffered a lot with mental health over the years, sort of isolated myself away from people due to some personal circumstances. Um, and really I had a love for cars and I didn't feel there was anywhere to be around for me to go connect with others who probably might have been in similar situations as me. So I thought, why not? Let's create a safe space of our own. And the mental health car club was born. Um, I just created it so other people can connect and come, feel safe, feel welcome. Doesn't matter what car you drive, how new, how old. We just want people to be there, support each other, and share their life experiences with people.

Absolutely. Is it geographically based? Do you meet up in a particular place or is it online community or uh we are an online community?

We host some car meets in my local area, which is Teaside. Um, and we are looking to expand out. I'm trying to get the club registered as a charity this year. Okay. So hopefully I can take that forward and we can start to spread out across the UK because we've got members all over.

Fantastic. And where can people find you? What's the best thing to do if they want to know more?

Uh find us on Instagram at Mental Health Car Club. That's our most popular page at the moment. We're slowly growing on Facebook, but Instagram is the place to be for us. Um, we have a great reach on them, people share the stories through us. So it's a it's a great place for everyone to come along and connect to.

Fantastic. Yeah, as we know, it's uh it's a big thing, isn't it? Mental health, especially also kind of amongst men as well. So um, as well as talking about old cars, we uh sort of champion um yeah, looking out for each other and looking after ourselves as well.

We all know that men don't like talking on an emotional basis, no, and and I think that people need to find some form of community. And and back in the day, I think that it was unspoken that you had this bit of camaraderie. If you drove a car, it didn't matter whether you drove a Ford Fiesta or you drove, you know, your dad's BMW, it didn't really matter. As long as you sort of got together on a Saturday night, you had something to sort of live for. I know it's a weird thing, but now we can actually bring it out into the open. And just a really quick question, if you don't mind me asking this, uh Andy.

No, yeah, go for it.

Where are you seeing that the future of the mental health car club throughout sort of 2025? Like, what are you guys up to and what and what are you sort of trying to bring together?

Um, I've started up on Teaside, I've started uh some it's a bit varied at the moment as to when we're having them on the frequency, but we've started a thing called Talk Talk, which is a peer support group for car enthusiasts. Uh, we have different meets throughout the area up in Teaside, and we invite everyone to come along. You know, we want people to come to connect over the shared passion of cars, but to also encourage them open conversations about life struggles. So I want to set up a peer support group, a bit like some other known peer support groups that are in the country. Want to host them on a weekly basis, or car infuser has to have a place to go because not everybody wants to sit in a room with people and share the problems, you know. So, especially in our world, people are comfortable around the cars. So if we can get people talking about cars, talking about life situations, then I think that's what's going to help us grow in 2025.

We need it, mate. Keep it up, it's a great thing you're doing. It really is.

I'm trying it. I I know that the car scene has some things around it, but it doesn't have the things that people really need, and that is the support for the mental health. So I'm just trying to bring something a little bit fresh to the table and the community, and and what a community to be a part of. It's a fantastic community with such caring people that are out there, but like you just said a minute ago, we've always had that sort of persona to put on around cars, and that needs to stop now with 2025 and the way that the world is working, these conversations need to be brought into.

Yeah, they do, they do, yeah, yeah. That's a quick one, Nathan, and kind of not breaking any sort of confidentiality. Is it a largely male-based group, I guess, or are you kind of seeing a balance there?

It's it's getting towards 50-50, to be fair.

Okay, fantastic.

When we first started out, it was a lot of men that joined up because I think it was just the cars and the men coming together over the cars. But over time we've noticed a lot of more female followers in our audience, and some of them are absolutely fantastic, you know, the way that they share their stories, open communication with other people. It's it's great to see that both sets of genders are coming into it now. It's not just one focus space that we're going for, yeah, because it does affect everybody.

Absolutely. Yeah, I think that's really healthy. Fantastic. Um, so yeah, we'll jump into it. What's your earliest car memory?

My granddad's 1982 Sierra Cosworth. Oh, lovely. Yeah, like I was born in '85, so obviously he'd had it for a couple of years before I'd come about, but he got rid of it when I must have been about six years old, and I've still got photos of us driving around in it. I tried to get them from my mum's cycle picture of me sat on the front wheel. So yeah, it was my first ever car that I remember was the Sierra Cosworth. And what a beautiful car. What were we to of two-door, four-door colour? Two-door, two-door. Um, and it was the navy blue colour, I think. I think it was. I'm not sure. I can I it's hard to tell on the pictures.

They did like um, is it a moonstone blue that's sort of a lighter blue?

Yeah, it's like a um, I'm trying to think of a colour similar to it on a car, but yeah, it was that it was that blue colour, and I just I just fell in love with cars, I think, ever since then.

Yeah, and tell us a little bit more about your granddad. Then I guess he was a car guy because you don't accidentally buy a cosworth.

No, no, yeah, he was an army lad to be fair. Um, he very rarely drove his cosworth. It was his pride and joy. He used to walk mainly all over the place, so when he did take it out of the garage and have it driving, it was very special, you know. It was just one of them his pride and joy. He'd worked hard, he'd been in the army most of his life, come out, started doing some other jobs, married and saved himself up for this little duty that he had. So, yeah.

And did he live locally to you?

Yeah, he was right round the corner from us. So every time my mum, she wasn't driving at the time, so we used to just walk over a bridge, go to his house, and then he was either there out on the front, polishing it away in the sunshine, or he was tinkering away with it in the garage somehow.

So, was he a bit of a hero in the local community then? Because I mean, what was the setup where you lived? Was there a lot of people with nice cars?

Or yeah, it was a seaside town. Uh, I grew up in Red Car. Don't know if you have heard of that.

Okay.

Yeah, I grew up in Redcar, which is a little small seaside town. So having a car like that in red car was, you know, a standout compared to all of the other cars that were out there. But um, yeah, he was he was a popular bloke throughout where we lived. Um, he was dead friendly, you know. He just used to chat and talk to everybody, so people always acknowledged him. He'd walk into shops and he could take things out of the shops and come back a couple of days later and pay for it because they all knew he'd and trust that he would. But yeah, yeah, I get a lot of my inspiration from him.

Yeah, yeah. He sounds like a great character. Was he one for music in the car or is he just sort of windows down, listen to the engine?

No, no, listen to the engine, hated music, absolutely hated it. Unless he was inside in the house, in his little corner of the house where my nan allocated him. Yeah, he wouldn't have any music and you weren't even allowed to play like kids' radio music to keep the kids happy in the car. It was like if they're crying, they're getting out of the car. So yeah, it was he was full on listening to the noise of the car.

And was that that was his car? That wasn't like a toy or anything, that was just like if him and your nan wanted to go to the shops, take the Cosworth.

Yeah, yeah, but it most of the time he made my nana either get the bus or walk. He still didn't take her in the car because he didn't want to put the mileage up on it.

Okay.

So yeah, he he just used to keep it there whenever they wanted to go out. It was more so for longer days out if they wanted to go to Scarborough, go to Whitby, rather than getting the buses, which used to take hours back then, just jump in the car.

Yeah, yeah.

So it was more for the long days out that he used to drive it. But other than that, if it was local, go into the shop or into the town, walk, get the bus.

So I'm quite excited actually. What did he replace the Cosworth with? And do you know why he got rid of it?

Uh health reasons. Health reasons. Oh, okay. Yeah, he ended up having a stroke and then he went for a triple heart bypass or something. Oh no. Got like a big scar going all the way up from his foot to his chest. Oh wow. It was just health conditions. He was gutted when he had to get rid of it because he'd only like run less than 10,000 miles on it. So he he was gutted that he had to give it over, but he sold it to another guy who he grew up with in the car scene as well. So it went to somebody else who was gonna look after it, didn't just go to any Tom Dick or Harry.

Yeah, yeah.

So did it skip a generation and the love for cars just go to you, or was there something in between? What about your sort of parents?

Yeah, um like my mum, she was a single mum as well, and then I've got an older sister, so like the girls back in them days they weren't really into the cars. So I got into the cars through my granddad, but then when he lost his car, he sort of lost that passion as well, so it never really was brought about. And then my mum passed her test, and she got um I think it was a 106 GTI.

Okay, very cool.

She got that as her first car because my granddad convinced her that's the best car you need to get. So yeah, as as he probably would. Um, so yeah, she got that, and then from after that, we've just been a Vauxhall family, all Vauxhalls throughout it since then.

Do you remember what colour the 106 was?

It was uh the grey colour, the dark grey. Okay. Yeah, I think.

And was was your mum on for radio as well, or or not at all?

Oh yeah, my mum was, she used to sing constantly in there. We had to listen to Whitney Houston, Celine Dion, and all sorts when we were driving with my mum. Those were some of the worst music I've ever listened to.

Well, no, I mean I'd I'd have a little sing along, so Whitney Houston.

I probably would know. I probably would now, not when I was five or six. Yeah.

When you're on your own, let people out of the car, the volume goes up, little Whitney.

I can tell. Just a little bit, just a little bit. I'm more Mariah Carey type of thing.

Nice. So with your kind of eyes tuned into cars when you were a kid, what else were you noticing in the neighbourhood that sort of turned your eye anything?

Not really much, because there wasn't like that many modified cars in that town. It was a small seaside town. So if anything, it was courses, courses and novas. There was a couple of novas, but nothing like modified or max powered style. They were just all standard back then. So yeah, it was yeah, Vauxhalls again, like they say. We switched over when my mum got rid of the she got rid of the 106 onto the proton, and then she went from a proton straight into Vauxhall, and we've never looked back from Vauxhall then. So I can't remember what mark Vauxhall that she got, but from then we've just always had Vauxhalls.

Okay, fair enough. So at school then, in terms of friends at school or your peers, was there any of their parents that had anything that sort of stood out or any sort of funny memories from going on trips with them?

Um, a couple of kids' parents were rich, so they had the Mercedes. You know, we there was always a few nice Mercedes around. But when I grew up going into secondary school, I moved to a little area called Ingleby Barwick, and that was full of all the Middlesbrough football players. So we had Jannin or Ravinelli Emerson. Okay. All of them lived close by, so you always used to see all the Porsches coming past uh 9-Elevens, Carreras, they were always going up there, the Land Rovers, they were all big on there, and a couple of Bentleys, it was when like Steve Gibson, the owner, used to pull up to the players' houses. You used to see them driving through. So yeah, it was more the high-end cars than anything that we used to see growing up. But yeah, I used to love all of them seeing them, especially with the football players in, you know, it was like, oh yeah, it's a nice car and my favourite footballer as well. So always a bit of a bonus.

One thing I found these days is because of um social media and Instagram, I think so many kids and younger people they they normalize these very expensive, rare, unique cars. Whereas when I was a kid growing up, whenever I caught sight of anything, like if every Ferrari drove by a Bentley, whatever, it was like it seemed so, so unattainable, like a completely different world.

Yeah.

Um, and we've lost that. That was a bit of magic. I don't think we've got that magic anymore, which is a shame.

Yeah, because like you said, that it's been mainstreamed that these cars are the cars that everyone should be driving. So when we used to see one walking past, it was special, you know, like seeing a Bentley amongst all the standard cars that were there. That was something magical to see as a kid, a high-end car like that. But now everyone's driving around in expensive cars that you know they've sort of lost that bit of magic.

Yeah, I guess from the kids' point of view, like you can go home and sit on your sofa and drive any of those cars, can't you? Like even before you got a driving license, you can log into Grand Turismo or whatever they're playing now. And yeah, you can drive one of them around the Nurberg rig to your heart's content.

Yeah, you don't even have to go outdoors now to see all the cars and live the experiences you can do from the comfort of your own home. Yeah, and that loses the magic. Yeah, that's not what like the cars are about. It's a shame. Yeah, you need to be out there experiencing them face to face, the thrill of the ride, the wind in your hair. I mean, not in my hair at the moment, like, but you know if we can try and bring that back in some way. I mean, I doubt it we'll get back to them days, like, but you've got to make cars magical for the younger generation somehow, haven't you?

We might, we might be able to get a bit of it back. We've just got to, I don't know, manage younger people's expectations and make them realise that you know these are quite special things and that they they're very privileged to be around vehicles that are expensive and and to enjoy them and you know understand how cool they are, you know?

Yeah, oh totally, totally, because they're not they're not cheap these days. They do they do cost a lot of money. And for someone to just mistreat the vehicle, it's not what they use there for, they use for everyday essentials, and people don't realise that how important a car is to your everyday life.

Yeah, yeah. I think in some ways kind of getting back to that, you've got to turn the internet off, haven't you?

Yeah.

And um I work um in a car parts supplier and we do Porsche and Volkswagen Land Rover parts. I'm working with this, won't go out until after it's happened anyway. We're working with a guy who um is building a show car which we're revealing in March. He's been building it for about five years and no one knows he's built it.

Nice hush hush.

We've been supplying parts for it, but I don't even know what colour it is or what he's done. I'm gonna see it next week.

Yeah, that'll be a nice surprise.

But there's none of that. That's kind of the the magic of going to an event like you mentioned Max Power. You go to a cruise and you see a picture or one of the cars turns up and it's been on the cover of the magazine the month before, yeah. And there's just like a wow, I guess that's a bit like seeing the A-Lister walk down the road, isn't it? For the for the kids who are into cars, like that's that car, yeah. Like the wide arch, whatever it is, or it's got doors which open in the wrong way, and yeah, some of that you lose because of the internet. As magical as the internet is, you lose some of that because of the internet, you just gotta be there.

Yeah, and you're seeing everybody do the modifications now online, you know, the YouTube videos, the streaming that on there of people doing all these modifications. So when it's done, you're like, Well, yeah, because I've watched it all get done, whereas it's just that reveal alone, that's the magic part about it, because you don't know what you're gonna expect. I think so.

I've seen cars online like multiple times from you know, a hundred car photographers, they'll take pictures of a car that's revealed at a dealership somewhere, and then I'll see it, you know, three weeks later at Goodwood or wherever it is. Yeah, and when I was a kid, if I'd have seen, you know, gone to the London Motor Show and seen a car, my jaw was on the floor. Yeah, when I get to Goodwood and I see this car, I'm like, I know everything about that car, I've seen it every angle of that car. Yeah, I just walk straight past it. It kind of means nothing to me now.

I mean, it is good, it is good to see these people modifying the cars because it can give you some inspiration on your own and it can help future generations get into that sort of industry of modifications. But yeah, when they then make a big hype over it after they've done the video up to the reveal, it's it sort of loses that bit of magic because everybody's seen it happen. Whereas if you just do a a secret one, or even if it was a diverted one where they've done all this videos, but then boom, it's a completely different car to the reveal. That's that's going to be the magic at the moment, isn't it? Because there's no other way to show it if you're watching the videos prior.

Yeah, John and I do the uh car spotting tennis on our social media, and we get excited about the cars you wouldn't expect to see. You walk down the street and then all of a sudden you find a car from 1982 or something like that, or it's you go to Sainsbury's and there's a Volvo from the 80s parked up. And that's a little bit kind of back to those cruise days, if you like, where you've just spotted the cover cut. There's a whole car park full of hybrid this and electric that, and then there's a faded E363 series with peeling lacquer and you're like, That's it though, all these old cars, all the cars now were coming back in because of that rarity.

Yeah, you know, that you don't see these older cars no more, or like you said, they're all electric hybrid cars. So seeing something from the 80s is is like, whoa, look at this. You haven't seen it in God knows how long.

Yeah. Did you have any friends back in the day who who modified a car or had a particularly cool car?

Yeah, one of my friends taught me how to drive in his. He had a Fiesta Z Tech S. Um, and he like he modified that. He spent thousands upon thousands upon thousands, like with the body kit, the alloys, the sound system, just everything you can think of for that car he put into it. And he taught me to drive in that, so that was like quite a special car for me. So I've got a little soft spot for the old Fiesas. Um, but yeah, uh that one and my friend had a Renault 19.

Oh yeah.

Yeah, lovely cars. Like I wasn't when I first got in it, I was thinking, what's this? Like it was too big. And as soon as he put his foot down, Jesus, I've never been in anything like it. He he modded that car beyond belief. And yeah, that was another special car for me. Because it was just cars that I hung around with growing up. Um and a Civic, they had a old Civic, but they'd put in an integra type R engine in it, and all that was absolutely rap. It only lasted about three weeks before it blew up the engine, but it was still a good car, special one.

What colour was the Renault 19? Do you remember?

White.

Oh, they're cool colour, white, yeah. Yeah.

And three-door or four-door?

Uh four-door.

Is it Shamade? Shamard or whatever it's called.

Yeah, yeah. But the lad who had the car, he said you can't get these in any other one except for the four-door, five-door version. He said if you get the three-door, he said it it just doesn't seem right. So I was like, Oh, okay. Like that was his preference, you know. But his was obviously the five-door one, and I just absolutely love that.

I think he couldn't find a three-door, maybe that was the problem. That's three-door in sports blue, that'd do, yeah.

Probably, yeah, that's probably why.

Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. Um, any road trips of note, kind of in parents' cars growing up, or maybe with your grandfather?

Well, with my granddad, we just used to go along a whippy to the beach, to the seaside. Um, but we did one recently with my daughter. Uh, I've got a 16-year-old autistic child. Oh, okay. We went to uh Scotland not long ago.

Oh, cool.

And she absolutely loved that. We made some great memories going along there. Uh, I loved it because of the car, just driving in the car, going up there. But she loved it because the views, the time that we spent together, the songs that we were singing along in the car. You know, it was just a magical experience driving up there. So, yeah, that's the latest journey that we've done.

I think when you become a parent, you kind of start reflecting a little bit differently, don't you? On how on the memories you remember from a kid, what sort of sparked you? I suppose if you've got a small vested interest in trying to get them interested in something you're interested in, you're like, okay, yeah, what was it that that kind of um got got you going? And yeah, can you get them on board with it?

And she's not interested in cars, you know, she's she's really not. I've tried to get her into it. But if she does photography and art at college, okay. So I've said, why not come along to the meet? It's perfect for you to get your like portfolio built up of all the cars that we'll have there. I know a couple of other photographers, I'll get you into it. We can give you some tips. No, don't like cars. Oh, all right. And so she prefers the drives in cars than actual cars themselves.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah. She's a good egg, but yeah, no chance of getting her into a into the car scene, I don't think.

And silly question, I guess. Um, are there any cars from your past which you're kind of you'd really want? I guess it's gotta be the Cosworth, isn't it?

Yeah. Unless you've got one. No, no, no. I wish I I wish I had one. Um yeah. The Cosworth or my old car that I unfortunately got wrote off a couple of years ago. Uh my Coursa VXR. Okay. I had a Coursa VXR Nurberg ring and by far that has been my favourite car I've ever had.

Green? Green one? Right?

No, it was the um chili orange one. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah. Nice car.

The chili orange one. Yeah, it was beautiful. Like I say, I always grew up with Vauxhalls and having seen the courses. I've had about eight courses before, so when I was fortunate enough to be able to afford the VXR, I got that, but then unfortunately it got wrote off about six months later. So I was a bit gutted. But yeah, I still wish I had that one or the Cosworth. Absolutely love the Cosworth. From what I remember of it, I haven't driven one since. I'd love to get behind the wheel of one again. But yeah, from just the look of the car, and now being older, you can appreciate them, all the cars now, and especially the Cosworth. It's it's just so iconic.

The um the voxels your mum was was into. Do you know where she was getting those from? Was that through a dealership or just to get out of the paper or no?

She used to get them brand new from Vauxhall all the time. Yeah, she uh she went car shopping and someone took her out in one of the Astras. Uh assuming she was in that, she just fell in love with Vauxhall and she just upgraded to the Astra each time that she wanted a new car.

Is that something you were involved with, kind of being the car person? Did you did you have a say in what colour or anything?

A little bit, yeah, but it's your mum. If I'd started back chatting her over which car to get, she'd just give me a backhander. So I was like, yeah, go for this one, try to explain it in the nice terms because she didn't have a clue, you know, she didn't know about all of the fuel saving things and stuff, so she wasn't she just wanted a nice car to drive. Yeah. So was trying to point her into the right direction, the right model, what would be better for her, and stuff. And yeah, she was she was quite open to the change, but if she was set on a certain colour or certain model of the car, then that was it. There was no change in her mind.

That sounds like my wife is very much like once she decides, I say, why don't we buy this? And she's like, No, don't like that one. And then literally she just focuses on something, and that's it. She will get it. It doesn't matter what it is. So, yeah, it's uh strong women's will, which I massively admire because I spend a long time deliberating these days on on what's right and what's wrong.

Yeah, no, just uh the penguins of Madagascar just smile and wave and everything will be happy. Yep, that'll do. Thank you. At least you're not sleeping on the couch today.

Exactly. So we got your grandparent, your granddad's Cosworth, your mum's voxels, so kids at school, nothing exciting, anything really terrible?

Uh no, I don't think so. Not that I can remember because we used to get the buses.

Or teachers?

Uh oh, there was a teacher with a a Morris minor.

Oh, cool.

Yeah, but that was clapped out. It was a proper rust bucket. It was proper rust bucket.

What did they teach?

Um history, geography. Yes, yes, yes, geography. Geography. It was it was a geography teacher.

Leather patches on the suit, yeah, on the L back.

On his suit there, his leather patch coming on, his old leather briefcase that was falling apart as just as much as his car was.

They have one in every school, don't they? Every school they have the same guy.

Yeah, there's always one wherever you go, no matter what. Even still, I went to my daughter's school before she finished, and she was saying, Oh yeah, that's a geography teacher. Then she pointed over and it was a history teacher, and he just looked exactly like my history teacher. And it was like, Jesus, as if they're still going on. You thought they'd be like 21 years old, 22 years old, and that is a 70-odd-year-old old man still ripping apart, looked like he smoked about slept on a bench. Yeah, it looks like he slept on a bush or something with hair all over the place.

Fantastic. Do you remember what colour the Morris Mile it was?

Rust. I think it was more rust colour than I I don't think you'd be able to tell what the original colour was. It was that bad. Uh I I can't remember to be fair. I think we just used to point and laugh at it every time. So it was just the rust bucket, that's what we used to call it. So yeah.

And there wasn't a flashy teacher that had anything like reasonably nice.

Uh just more like a Land Rover, Range Rover type of car. That was that was it. I think that was the headmasters. It was on a bigger salary, probably. So yeah, that was that was really the only cars that stood out. Mask wasn't like full of posh people or anything like that. It was just normal people. So the cars were just everyday cars that you used to see with except for the rust bucket standing out. That was about it.

Yeah, yeah. Fair enough. Well, yeah, thank you very much for joining us, Nathan.

No, no problem.

I think it's yeah, good place to kind of wrap it up. And um, yeah, it's great to hear what you're doing. I think, yeah, absolutely very valid cause, and um, yeah, people need to not be afraid to talk really and kind of just open up a little bit. It's no sign of weakness, it's just a case of uh yeah, sharing things. And when you meet someone, you kind of don't know what they've been through, but equally they might have the answer for you.

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And that's it. Building a community through the lived experiences. I think that's the best way that we can build this community through everyone's shared experiences, and like our motto says, it ain't weak to speak. You know, you can be out there, speak to anybody, it doesn't matter who, where from, someone will listen, and there's a community out there that cares.

And and I think it's really important to be totally accepting of everyone. And what I mean by that is it's so easy to be elitist. Like, I've got a car club that's been running for a while on Facebook, and it doesn't have much reach anymore, but it was very popular six, seven years ago. I always called it Petrol Hedge Unite, and the message were it doesn't really matter what you drive, everyone's from different backgrounds, everyone's got different budgets. That doesn't matter if if you've got a passion for a particular vehicle, just come along and and it's it's very important that everyone enjoys that. And you know, if you're a Subaru or an Evo owner, it's like you know, shake hands and have a you know have a mutual respect. Yeah, exactly. We need so much more of that now. We need to teach that, yeah.

And hopefully we can build that up now in the car scene. It it was there before, so it can come back again, you know, and with these open conversations, that's what we are aiming to do.

Yeah, absolutely.

Cool, thank you very much, Nathan.

Oh, thank you. Thank you for having me, appreciate it.

Thanks, Nathan. Cheers, mate. Keep doing what you're doing.

Thanks, mate. You too.

See you later. Bye, bye.

Cool. That was alright, wasn't it? Yeah, it's alright, mate. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Thank you for standing in. He was whether he was short of stories or not, l a little bit perhaps.

Yeah, I think I think the motivation and reasons why people are in this community are so vast. I mean, he's from a totally different background to me, you know, completely different. Obviously, his granddad was his just his hero.

Yeah, yeah.

He has those memories and he just clicks to them. But yeah, I think you know, some people don't have as as many stories, but it doesn't make their journey any less uh meaningful. Do you know what I mean?

No, I yeah, I agree, absolutely. And I equally the um and I I could relate to it a little bit because yeah, he was kind of into the Max Powery type stuff, as I guess we were kind of growing up. And I suppose I yeah, I was very fortunate because I grew up with my dad being into cars as well, so I sort of had all of that when I wasn't kind of heading a magazine or walking to school, and it probably if it wasn't for that, maybe I wouldn't have been so sort of open to all the other vehicles around. Actually, at that age, potentially for him, yeah, if it didn't have a whale tail, it didn't exist.

Like that wasn't it, it didn't matter. The funny thing was is that you know, I was so into the max scene that I built several max power cars, but obviously, when we had our conversation, I said there was there was particular things like there was that D Tomaso Pantera that I saw, yeah, that was like otherworldly, and all these like cars that I saw an e-type, and it was just like wow, like complete wow factor. But the reason why I got into the max power community was when I was 16, I got a job at Howard's. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was my first other job. In fact, I had to go to a community center in the evening because they were opening one of the first big superstores, so they invited about three, four hundred people to go and they did a test and an interview, and then 35 of us ended up getting the job. And I was one of them, and I was I was 16 years old, hadn't passed my test. And on the first day, I was working with this guy called Nick, and Nick was like, I'll come and pick you up. And he was about 18, I think Nick was. And he pulls up outside my mum and dad's house and he had a Renault 5 turbo raider.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

We get in the car, and I'm like, this is quite a cool car, you know. He puts the garage tunes on, starts the car up, like, and there's like all the dump valves going off. And at that moment, I was like, now this is really cool. And then everyone at Hamps was just into like whacking fog lights on their cars, but you know, doing all these bits and pieces. And without that job at Hampshire, I'd have always loved cars, but I wouldn't have gone into the direction of max power, just just being around the people at Hamps that were all like wanting to do these cherry bomb exhausts and everything, and it just developed. And it's amazing how we, you know, one or two things that make us shift off, you know. But I'm so glad I did.

That's uh that's um yeah, funny in many ways, actually. So John and I met working at Hampshire. Really? Yeah, we managed two years, not saying how purely because we both left kind of hating them, but yeah, we both worked there. So yeah, I worked on Rip Speed for years. Basically, I started in oh one, I think, and left in 07, something like that. Really? So that yeah, I ran a car club, which is how I met Kelly Young.

Kelly, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Kelly's Puck, yeah, yeah.

Because I knew Kelly as well from Max Power Days, so yeah.

So yeah, we live in the same town, so she was like local hero, because yeah, her car would come out once in a blue moon, and it was back in those days with like no communication unless you see each other in person and you kind of know vehicles which have been in magazines locally.

Yeah.

And um, yeah, we used to run a car club, so yeah, working at kind of on the audio desk, people would come in and you'd just be able to sell them a t-shirt out of the drawer or do them stickers, sign them up for going to Donny South or whatever it was. So, yeah, very useful for that kind of that thing.

It's crazy. My my friend Rob, we used to own an Astro GTE turbo together and we like painted it and all that sort of stuff. And that was one of our first it ended up just being mine, and then I did a whole big thing to it. He went into Cosmos. He still works at Really. Well, from when we were sitting, yeah, he's still but yeah, like Kelly was always around on the scene. Um, my ex, we used to do a couple of cars up for her, she had a course that was very well known. It was a that was a cover car as well. Yeah, so we'd always kind of bump into people.

Cool, okay. Well, yeah, thank you very much for stepping in, Paul. It's been good fun.

No, keep going, mate. I'll um I'll chat to you very soon, yeah. Cool, okay. Look after yourself. Cheers, mate.

Bait, mate. Okay, cool. There you go. That was um yeah, Nathan from Mental Health Car Club and Paul Garner from Speedbroker as our guest and co-host. Yeah, we'll wrap this up. Roll the credits.

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