Tom Gray - That Guy Gray: Sunbeam Alpine, My Dad's Company BMWs got replaced by Ford Mondeos. E39 5-Series, Peugeot 406, BMW Z3, BMW Z4. S8E10

Because if you put that on, my mum would start driving like a spanner. First car that I can remember that I thought, uh, that's really cool. And I was allowed to sit in it because the driver kind of took pity on like an eight-year-old coming to the festival with tired knees. They basically became white goods after 2015. Everybody was queuing up for petrol, but my dad didn't want to. So what he did was he ripped off the number plate of his car. That was arguably one of the greatest days of my life.

Welcome to my dad's car. Enjoy.

Welcome to my dad's car, a podcast discussing our personal relationship with dad car. And you know what? It doesn't even have to be about your dad's car. It could be your mum, your grand, your dad, dad, or even a dad. If it makes an impression, let's talk about it.

Oh. Well hi. How are we doing? Oh, we're alright. You? Good, good. Yeah, not too bad, thank you.

Wonderful. Hello there, Tom.

How are we good to say? You well?

I'm good, thank you. And yourself?

Yes, not bad there, champ. Not bad. I do apologize. I'm just cleaning up the old glasses. I caught a reflection and thought, my god, they don't have to look dirty.

Nice to meet you, Tom.

Lovely to meet you there, John. Loving the Addidas hoodies.

I was gonna say I feel very underdressed compared to yourself.

I am unfortunately that annoying human being that is always in a stiff-collar shirt and a tie. Um so I apologize if you feel underdressed. I've just come overdressed, I think, is probably the correct.

That's nice to see. Have you got a pipe just off screen, Tom?

I I I wish I had a pipe, and I to be fair, I've always wanted a pipe just so that I can point at people with it and show my disgruntled sort of manner just by pointing the end of a smoking pipe as it sort of billows out and into their face.

Maybe a little snuff box to go with it.

Wouldn't that just be superb? Uh, but no, unfortunately, I have to stick to the uh the regular old school sort of uh vinyl tobacco rather than the pipe. I don't think I can quite pull it off as a 30-year-old just yet.

What's your vehicle of choice?

Uh vehicle of choice is a 2012 Range Rover L322 Westminster.

Oh, very nice. How's that yourself? What cars do you drive? Oh, um, I've got a 944.

Oh, I mean a 944 is is the car that I'm racing this year. Okay. And they are brilliant. You know, a little bit of transaction means that you can have a little bit of fun entering and exiting the corners. And I don't have to wait for the rear tires to kind of warm up before I put my foot down. I like the box does that are ahead of me. Um, as I saw when I was at the crops, because some guy comes through the first chicane, puts his foot down, loses the rear, and then barrel rolled it twice after he had a tire stack. Wow. Yeah. Terrifying for your first race, but it was a learning experience, so I'm not going to complain to you.

Um before before we jump into it, just a quick one. Is is the car thing your day job, or is it just a hobby gone out of control?

Uh kind of a bit of both, really. So, I mean, I kind of started making talking hate content about two and a half years ago on TikTok. Um, ran to about literally everything from you know cars, motorsport history, used to talk about politics, but decided to drop that just because uh a couple of death threats, and just kind of thinking, well, I don't want to get myself upset, so I don't want to talk about the world in general anymore. And then in August of last year, I decided to make the plunge and try and do this full-time, and have now burnt the entirety of my life savings. Um putting it, putting it into YouTube, uh, and still, you know, crossing fingers and touching wood every single day in the hope that it'll come back. Uh, but it's starting to look a little bit more promising, and hopefully by the end of the year I'll be able to look at my tax return and go, that was a smart move, rather than you know, wanting to find uh a long drop with a short stop.

Um, well, yeah, wonderful. Welcome along. Um, so yeah, for the benefit of the tape. Uh, do you prefer Thomas or Tom? Just before we kind of You can call me Susan if it makes you happy, but honestly, I'm not so yeah, for the benefit of the tape, we're joined by uh Tom Gray, who I stumbled across on Instagram. I think you're good friends with Grant Williams, who was a guest we had on a couple of weeks ago. I'd seen some content you'd done with him, with his Jaguar, and I thought, oh yeah, you look like an interesting gentleman. We'll reach out to you and maybe have a chat, and here we are.

So here we are indeed. And yes, no, Grant has interestingly become quite a good friend of mine in the past couple of years. Um, you know, always hero worshipped him, you know, driving his Mark I by one up the Goodwood Hill, never in a straight line, and always thought if I was ever going to try and be a racing driver, that's what I'd like to be like, you know, giving it the full beans going sideways. And weirdly, was at the revival a couple of years ago, or it must have been last year actually, and I was explaining to my girlfriend about why the XK engine is arguably one of the best ever made. And she was actually humouring me and listening and sort of understanding and trying to go along with it. And then just out of nowhere, I just hear this all right, but I love your videos, come sprinting over and just run. And I was like, excuse me? Um, had a bit of a come to Jesus moment, and uh yeah, we've kind of just you know chat on a near weekly basis ever since.

Oh amazing. Yeah, we I've I have met him in person actually. I bumped into him at members' meeting. We had a quick uh quick natter. So um yeah, I really enjoyed that episode and um yeah, nice to meet him in person as well. Really, really lovely guy. So, yeah, we we start all these exactly the same. What's your earliest car memory?

Ooh, god crumbs. So, as much as I've now made a living out of showing that I have a somewhat decent memory, my earliest car memory is hard to to kind of pinpoint because I can't remember what age I was when these things happened. So there's two answers that I would give to that. So the first sort of earliest memory of a car of me driving, as I was 12 years old, I believe. And a family friend of ours took me out in his Sunbeam Alpine. Oh, okay, yeah. And we just went kind of around the lovely little gated community of Little Aston on the outside of Birmingham, and I was sat on his lap and I could just about see over the little steering wheel. He did all of the pedals, and you know, I did the steering, and I felt like James Dean, even though I didn't know who James Dean was when I was 12. No. Um, and that was utterly brilliant. And then probably the other answer would be either going to Goodwood and seeing an F1 car for the first time and fearing I had tinnitus, or just kind of the boring and beige answer of watching Top Gear on a Sunday night with my father and begging and pleading to stay up until nine o'clock. Yeah, yeah. I'm sure everybody can kind of relate to that.

Yeah, yeah. Was your father a car guy, Tom? Would you say?

Massively so. Um a product of the uh sort of 70s and 80s of everything works if you used enough swear words and a lump hammer to get it moving again. You know, was massively into sort of dirt bikes, I believe they called it scrambling back in the day because he worked on a farm, so he would be forever messing around in old series, Land Rovers and on his pit bikes. And there's a brilliant picture of my father when he's probably about 26. He got his first proper job and he bought himself a bright orange Ford Escort XR3i. And he sat there with one of the big telephones, he's got a permed mullet. This is before he had kids, he was still quite slim. Um, it was a very, very interesting look, and you know, he's so much into cars these days that even as a retired man who had a very successful life, he's now started working for a car supermarket picking up and delivering all manner of cars just as a way to keep himself busy. And every day I get a picture of some new toy that he's picked up. I think last week he was messing around in a Bentley Continental GT and a Porsche 9-11 GT3. Nice. So, yeah, a little bit of a petrol head, I would say.

I suppose that kind of role, they're looking for a sort of a more mature person to do it, aren't they? I suppose, sort of a trusted role.

Yeah, I mean, I don't know if you would say my father's a trusted sort of individual. I mean, that's a bit of a joke. He's a very, very trustworthy individual, but you know, you give him keys to a toy and he will go and have some proper fun. And it was quite funny because I can remember he took out this bright pink 911 GT3 and the amount of swear words and sort of profanity and almost what's the other word I'm looking for, uh, blaspheming that was coming out of his mouth after driving that. It was like, it's too scary, I can't do it, I'm too old, it's too stiff. Oh, that was good fun. I want to do it again. Um hilariously got to drive it the next day. And I was like, you do know it's got a comfort mode. Tried that, and he was like, I don't want to say that I'm north of 60, but I actually prefer it in comfort mode than I do track.

Wonderful. Um, does your mum drive as well?

My mum does indeed drive. Um likes to consider herself a petrol head, even though she probably couldn't tell the difference between a petrol and a diesel engine as it drove down the road. Um, bless her. But her daily driver, she's now actually going through the process of buying it from the dealership uh after the PCP has ended, and she's got a 2020 JCW Mini, which is a manual, okay. So quite a rare little DC. And bless her. She's like, I want to make it louder, I want to rip the back box off like you did on your Z4, and I want it to pop and bang, and I want to put a chip in it so it goes quicker. It's like, I I love you, mum, but you can barely handle the car as it is. There's no point in trying to make it more of a rolling asbow. Because those cars are genuinely quick, you know, and they're a handful. If the front tires are even slightly old, you are going to be spinning the wheels all the way up to fourth when you come off a wet roundabout. They are brilliant little bits of care.

Wonderful. If we go kind of wind the clock all the way back, say, yeah, when you were first going to school or whatever, what was on the driveway at home or parked outside? Do you remember what your parents had?

I can I can probably name every single car that my parents had. So I was brought home in a bright red Peugeot 406 estate that was then replaced with a blue 406 estate, uh, which to be fair is probably the first car that I can ever remember.

Yeah.

My mum at the time had an older sort of early 90s or sort of late 80s Ford Fiesta Ghia, nonetheless, that was then replaced with a Powder Puff Blue Ford Focus. Nice. My dad then went through a string of E39 5 Series. I think he had a 523, a 520, and a 530, which was my favourite because it was in that glorious sort of dark royal green with a cream interior, wood panelling.

It was just Oxford Green, I think they call it.

That was it, yes, Oxford Green. It was the mutt nuts, that thing.

The best car ever, the E39. I champion it.

100%. Love an E39. And to be fair, an E39 M5 is a car that I pine over. I want one so bad.

I was behind one yesterday, funny enough, on the motorway. I was I wouldn't say I was trying to keep up with it because it's not really possible, but it was yeah, it was going along quite nicely. Nice black one. Oh still a few of them out in the wild, it's nice to see. They're glorious machines.

Um, and then unfortunately, my dad's company changed their company car policies. We were no longer allowed to drive around in BMWs, and I got very upset because he then got downgraded to Ford Mondeo's.

Oh, okay.

So he had a string of those. Then my mum had a lilac Mitsubishi Grandis, okay, which we called the Christmas because you you hit the brakes and it had like 80 LED lights at the back and you flyed anyone behind you. But that car had DVD players, so we thought that was great as kids. Dad then ended up getting, I can remember he had a dark blue five series, the F series. He then got an F series 730.

Did you have any influence in your father's selections at all, Tom? Or was it all down to him? Maybe as you got older.

I mean, I had no influence in what he bought, but he very much influenced what I bought. So I guess probably sacrilege of me leaving it so long to mention this car, but he's got a 1997 2.8 Z3. Nice. So pre-phase lift, but it's got the wider body kit on it.

What colour?

Bright red. Or fire engine red, I think they called it, something like that. I can't remember the actual name. The black interior, it's rocking and has since he bought it E46 M3 wheels, which are far too large for it, but it looks great. Little chrome sort of shark fin gills on the side of it. Um, he brought that home when I was 13, and that's why I now drive a Z4 coupe. I always wanted a two-seat beamer, but I couldn't afford a clown shoe because I'm not a millionaire, and I couldn't justify driving a convertible because with my slender physique and choice of facial hair and hairdo, many questions would be raised. So I thought, right, well, I'm at the better stick coupe. Um, and I absolutely adore my Z4, it just feels like a faster, more solid version of the Z3. You know, you park them side by side, they're near identical wheelbase, height, width.

Um, tell us about music, Tom, with your parents. Do you remember them kind of listening to music? And who was in the car? You got brothers and sisters?

Yes.

Yeah, yeah. So I can remember obviously, you know, I'm the eldest of three. So it was my brother, who's two years younger than me, and then my sister who's eight years younger than me. Um, my mum, the one song I can remember that was always fun to put on was Axel F, which then later became the like crazy frog theme tune.

Yeah, yeah.

Because if you put that on, my mum would start driving like a spanner, um, which is always good fun. That and Melanie C were always played in my mum's car. And then in my dad's car, there were three genres. It was either ABBA, Dire Straits, or then his like favourite music mix that he made when you could first burn CDs and it had things like The Day the Music Died or American Pie, sorry, then it was like Sweet Home Alabama, there was a bit of Black Sabbath on there. Um, quite the neclectic mix, um, and also a lot of MM thinking about it now.

Well, that's an unusual mix, isn't it, for the dad? That's a first, I think. Certainly for us.

Yeah, my dad's a bit of a rogue human being, you know. You look at him and think, oh yes, busy M4 businessman, and there he's just driving down, you know, the M4 at outside lane motorway speeds, listening to lose yourself. It was quite interesting.

It's um uh not particularly connected. Is your dad also a kind of a a dapper dresser?

Hence the tweed, or is that No, I would say that my dad is very typical middle class sort of outfit type person. You know, it'll usually be like a a polo shirt or like a weird fish t-shirt with some ridiculous sort of saying on it, like sons of anchovies, and it's a bunch of fish riding like Harley Davidson's. Very good, yeah. I'm slowly turning him more country, so I bought him, you know, a baker boy hat. He's now rocking a barber, uh, he's got himself some decent Chelsea boots, but he's yeah, very, very middle of the road character. I think this just all comes from my love affair with Goodwood and classic cars, and just kind of going, well, things just look cooler in the old days, all the rest like that, I think.

Is there someone in particular that you sort of looked up to, Tom, in in doing that, well following that sort of path with the I don't know, the vintage kind of style and cars, that kind of thing? Good question.

Um, I would say that kind of the one person that I drew inspiration from a lot is actually an Instagram at a guy called Damien Broderick, who is an Irish sort of fashion Easter, I suppose. And he's forever wearing like 60s and 30s and 40s suits. That's very much his thing.

Yeah.

Um, and I always kind of looked to that and thought, he looks really, really cool. The only problem was is, you know, he's got millions of followers and gets brand deals out wazoo. So, you know, it's it's quite easy to afford those lovely clothes when you're quite a well-off individual. But that's kind of it. I just kind of look to I would always say that my kind of my style I'd suppose is very much old school meets modern.

Okay.

And just try and wear whatever I feel comfortable in. You know, a a a shirt and tie is very much my armour, I suppose. And people pay more attention to what I'm wearing rather than what I'm saying, which kind of gives me some grace if I ever say something stupid.

Do you remember? I guess maybe at school or or growing up, you mentioned the Sunbeam Alpine earlier, the first car, which kind of made you go, Oh, cars are a cool thing. Or maybe it was a kid turning up at school, like mum dad had something interesting. Hmm, that's a good question. Um, I think what was the first car? Obviously, your dad wasn't doing badly, to be fair, with the with the E39s, right? That's kind of a decent, decent lineup.

Well, that was it, is I was always known as Poshboy Tom at school because my dad always had a revolving fleet of nice cars every 18 months. Um, but probably the first car that I can remember that I thought uh that's really cool was probably when I was watching Top Gear and I saw Ferrarienzo for the first time. And I just looked at that and thought, what on earth is that that's incredible. Yeah. And then that kind of started a deep dive into big all things cars, I suppose.

Yeah, yeah.

But I guess, you know, the first car that I can remember that I saw in the flesh and thought, oh my goodness, was probably a land speed record car at the Goodworth Festival of Speed called Babs, which decapitated the driver on a speedrun at Pendine Sands.

Okay.

I saw that in the flesh, and I was just awestruck by it. You know, 1912 Aero engineed car, and I just thought, whoa, that's what they used to be like. And I was allowed to sit in it because the driver kind of took pity on like an eight-year-old coming to the festival with tired knees. And yeah, I mean, cars I've just always thought are cool, always thought are cool. So it's kind of hard to narrow it down, but there are a couple that kind of stick out where you're like, yeah, that was really kind of a turning point of where if I can make this my life, then yes, please.

And is there a that's kind of a pretty broad church, like 1900s land speed car and Ferrariendo? Are you more attracted to the modern stuff, or do you prefer kind of the classic or the vintage cars?

So I've got possibly a controversial opinion. It'll be interesting to hear your thoughts on it. I think that cars peaked in about 2015. Everything after 2015 kind of got a little bit too sanitized, too technological. Don't get me wrong, the newer cars are far more capable than their older counterparts, but I just felt that they lost their true identity and character and they basically became white goods after 2015.

Fair enough.

I would say the golden era of cars is probably the mid-2000s, just because you had such an array of amazing, still somewhat analogue cars. But I'm fascinated with everything that has four wheels and makes a noise that kind of makes the earth move. You know, recently I was just at Goodwood and I and I learned to drive a 1929, four and a half litre heavy chassis Bentley. That was arguably one of the greatest days of my life. And then a couple of weeks before that, I was at Goodwood Media Day and I was driving an Alpine A110R, and it was a bit of a revolution for me because I was driving this not very powerful car around Goodwood and I was overtaking M4s in it around the corners. I mean, don't get me wrong, that the M4 was probably being driven by a quote unquote influencer, and I've got an odd, so I know how to drive. But anything that I can feel a connection with or anthropomorphic with, then I then I very much enjoy.

Yeah, yeah. I think, yeah, my opinion, generally, sort of after 2000, I switch off. Generally speaking, stuff a little bit newer than that, I probably wouldn't go as far as 2015. But yeah, definitely I much prefer older stuff than than new cars. Something with personality, something I can sort of get some feedback in. Yeah, I've got no interest really in driving an appliance, like you say.

I think we've discussed on here before and with other guests, Andy, that yeah, those sort of early 2000s were kind of the pinnacle of like motoring engineering. The E39 is like the prime example, in my opinion, of how that car, the 5-2s evolved, and then there's a real sense of that particular model that they pulled out all the stops on making it the best possible saloon car of its time. And then after that, it kind of got a little bit penny pinching with the materials and everything, and it kind of followed suit, I think, with other brands. And yeah, I'm the same as you, Andy. It goes beyond sort of 2010. I'm I'm really switching off.

But yeah, I think there's built in obsolescence as well, isn't there, with kind of the new. Cars cars started to have a shelf life. When you could look at sort of the yeah, the 80s, the 90s, I guess early noughties, they were still building cars that were going to last you a lifetime.

Whereas well, it's the White Goods thing, isn't it? Really? As Tom said, it's that exactly. It's the same as a phone, isn't it? A phone, a new phone's coming out every year, I don't know how often every year or so.

So yeah, it's it's a sad reality. Don't get me wrong, as I say, the the the new cars are incredibly capable. I've been very, very lucky to drive both an E39 M5 and an F90 M5. And don't get me wrong, the F90 is by far the more capable machine, far faster, far quicker round of track, and the finishing of it is actually really good. But you've got all of this technology in it that kind of detracts away from it. You know, you have to go through a plethora of options to turn off all the driver aids, which is boring because as soon as you get in the car, it resets them all to being on. And you look at the E39, you're like, that is a timeless design. Like I remember when my dad had to get rid of his last one. Part of the reason that they went to Ford was because even his company knew that the new 5 series wasn't as good as the E39. You know, the E39, they could have kept making that all the way until today.

Yeah, yeah.

Nobody would have cared. Everyone's been like, yeah, it's great, it's the Volkswagen Beetle, it's the you know British Leyland Mini. You don't need to change it, but they felt they had to, and the the following five series, I just don't think had the same, the same lust after it. And the only way that they managed to keep any of that was by putting a incredibly unreliable V10 derived race engine into it.

Yeah. Was it the um the kind of the sharp edge five series that followed the E39, the one which was sort of the and it had a bit of a funny boot, didn't it? And the rear lights didn't sit right.

And yeah. They they had a new designer, didn't they, come in for that era? Bangle. Yeah. Yeah, some challenging looks. Yeah, I don't think the M5 was the I wouldn't say it was an ugly car, but yeah, you had to really sort of get your head around it, I think. Given what would come before.

Yeah, it was it was very much, you know, kind of the Bangle era of BMW. And I'm gonna sound awfully hypocritical because I own one and I love one, but you know, that era of BMW it very much became a case of the base model cars looked terrible. If you spec them correctly, they did look quite good. Um, you know, the M5 looked alright, the M3 looked alright, you know, the M6 looked good, but all of the base spec cars looked absolutely atrocious, and unfortunately, that's what most people could afford. Yeah. Because everybody wanted to drive a BMW and not Ford. So they went, well, I'll get a basic BMW because it says BMV on the front, and then everybody's kind of love affair with the brand died because it was a case of get yourself a bargain basement version rather than get one because you can afford it and get a really good one.

Was your dad one to get his hands oily, Tom?

Okay, it kind of depends. I mean, I've got fond memories of him getting his hands dirty with my first cars. You know, my Volkswagen Lupo, we did the brakes on that together, my Ford Fiesta's ETEC S, we bent the front slam panel straight after I um had a miner coming together with a deer. And, you know, we sanded down, Bondoed, and sort of fiberglassed the rear arches after they went because you know early Northeast Fiesta's chewed rear arches quicker than a Mark Ford golf. But you know, when it came to working on his cars, that was very much a case of living the world of pay the man because I don't want it to go wrong because this is my pride and joy. And that's kind of where I sit, if I'm being honest. I like getting my fingers dirty and I love understanding mechanics. But if I've got to use the car every day, I need it to get worked on by somebody that's not going to mess it up.

Can relate for that. Um, do you recall particular road trips you might have done as a family? Any places you were going, or maybe maybe kind of holidays or kind of visiting family or stuff that you would do sort of on the regular?

Yeah, so there's a few answers to that. So growing up, I lived in Marlborough, and my dad's mum, my grandmother, who is arguably the most important woman in my life, my girlfriend and my mum probably wouldn't be surprised to hear me say that. Um, you know, she lived in Winchester, and that's about a 45-minute drive through some beautiful parts of the country. And I can remember very, very vividly sitting in the back of an array of my dad's cars, especially the E39s, sort of driving through all these beautiful uh this landscape, and then at night coming home and on the sort of top centre console, I suppose, just above the rearview mirror, there were two little holes where you had orange lights that would come down and onto the centre console where the gear stick was. And I can remember very vividly just watching these two little reflections just wobble around on the sort of gear stick console for miles upon miles of my childhood. You know, probably the sort of first road trip we did was when we went down to Bordeaux in the Oxford Green fired series. Uh, but that was during the fuel strikes in France. And um I remember my dad called the holiday two days short. Um, everybody was queuing up for petrol, but my dad didn't want to, so what he did was he ripped off the number plate of his car, drove to a French petrol station because they weren't gonna let an Englishman fill up his car, quickly like barged in like any good BMW driver would and be like, I'm more important than everybody else. Pulled in, filled up the car, then had to duct tape over the fuel cap to stop people like siphoning it if ever he got pulled over.

Alright.

I can remember him putting his number plates back on at the petrol station and our car getting eggs because people realised that we were actually English and they didn't like it. And he managed to do Bordeaux to Winchester in a single tank in an E39530, and just poofed it all the way up the sort of payage, and yeah, just me kind of being sat in the back just looking at the world go by it at a slightly faster rate than I was used to. And then yeah, did a couple of road trips with my father in the Z3, you know, going down to the Nurberg ring. I can remember we did the Selvio Pass, Saint Gossard Pass, uh San Bernardino, and then doing a million-one track days in that car as well. So yeah, doing road trips was it was a big part of my childhood, but unfortunately. Well, I moved to London for a large part of my early adult life. Um, I've not yet been on one myself yet, but that hopefully will change by the end of the year, touch wood.

Fantastic. The um the road trip thing actually takes me back to being a kid, actually, you go and do sort of long journeys. We used to do quite a lot up and down to Kent, and um always remember sitting in the back of the car, and especially on the way home, the glass was always cold, and you'd kind of just start drifting off, and then the you just get cold glass against the cheeks.

Oh just the word, just the word.

But um, yeah, so you mentioned kind of earlier, but I think before we started recording, that you uh you sort of got into some racing as well. That's I guess your father's influence if you did some track days with him as well, is it?

Um I mean I would say it's more of an influence of Gran Turismo, to be honest, than Michael Schumacher. Um I am a ultimate Michael Schumacher fanboy. I will always say that he is the greatest of all time. I've got quite a controversial top three because I would say Michael, Jim, Clark, and then I don't know who the third would be, um, because there's so many people that can fill that spot. But yeah, I've always loved racing, always been a dab hand on a simulator. And I was very, very lucky that the Calm All Porsche trophy, Fiki Plug, yeah, they reached out to me and asked if I'd like to race a car this year in the series on behalf of Chichester College, because some of the content I make is is surrounding mental health. And I was raised better than to say no to a free race seat, or at least I thought it was a free race seat, and then I realized all of the accoutrements that one has to purchase to go racing, and it costs me about five grand so far. But yeah, yeah. It's a damn so cheaper than than what it would actually be. We've had one race weekend so far, which ended in catastrophe. Unfortunately, the car was badly misbehaving. Uh the 944 that we took testing, the engine blew up on that, so we couldn't take it, so we kind of pulled out of storage an old 924. Um the throttle cable snapped in race one, and then the top pose of the radiator kind of ended up resembling the top of a can of tuna.

Oh god.

When I stamped on the brakes and it overheated in race two, and that also sheared the alternator bracket and pulled the fan belt off, and we couldn't go racing on Sunday, so that was heartache central. Uh, but hopefully going to Donington on the 30th of May this year. Fingers crossed, the car behaves itself, and I will actually complete a race because I've been spending a lot of time go-karting against pro drivers recently. And we did an event where there were, I think, 30 pro drivers out of 60 people there, and I was posting times in the top six, and they started getting very annoyed at me because I was there to be the presenter, not to be faster than most of the pro drivers. But my my my retort was hey, just drive faster. So I'm the most unaerodynamic person in the world. I weigh more than any of these drivers. I'm six foot two. So I was like, what's your excuse? Uh so fingers crossed racing can actually go quite well then.

Yeah, yeah. Sounds like you're uh you've got the skills, could be good.

Should be. I'd love to be able to look back on my life um and show my future kids if ever I'm lucky enough to have them and say, you know, dad was a racing driver. Look at all these cool trophies and videos I made. Rather than dad was a quick driver, but his car kept exploding. Um I'd rather not have to keep saying that.

No, fantastic. Um, yeah, I think cool place to wrap it up, really. But yeah, thank you very much for joining us, Tom. It's been good fun. But a lot of laughs.

Uh I've really, really appreciated it, and thank you very much for for the invite on. Um, it's always lovely to sit down to some like-minded individuals and have a good old shimwag about automobiles.

Thanks, Tom. Fantastic. Yeah, really appreciate it.

No, really, really enjoyed it. Um, and uh, yeah, if there's anything I can do to help you guys, just give me a shout and uh I shall do exactly that.

Well, thank you very much. Thanks, Tom.

Marvellous. All right then, chats. Well, I shall leave you in peace. Enjoy the rest of your day and uh hopefully speak to you very soon.

Take care. Cheers. Cheers, bye-bye, bye. Cool. Here we go. He was a funny guy, wasn't he? He was a character, yeah. Yeah, yeah. I enjoyed that. Yeah, hopefully, fingers crossed, we've not kind of lost much to or anything to uh the interference and crackling on the line.

Um No, I think it was mainly okay, wasn't it? I think at the start it was fine, then yeah. Yeah, yeah. When his phone got a little bit hot, that's when it started going a bit crackling.

So yeah, if any of that stayed in, then apologies for a small glitch in the uh audio quality. But um yeah, we appreciate you hanging on to listen to it. So good car we we sort of started newer and then worked backwards, didn't we, on in this instance? But um yeah, some good stuff in there. The Sunbeam Alpine, probably the oldest car, apart from the Bentleys and stuff he's been driving. But um some great road trips in there as well at the end. Yeah, obviously his dad's got great taste in cars echoed by yourself with the E39.

Yeah, it's always good to hear the old E39 get a mention.

Yeah, you've got room on the driveway now, John. Well, yeah.

I don't think Mr. Khan will allow it to travel. Room for a BX, perhaps. Get myself a good jet wash to get all the rust off the driveway.

Yeah. Um so yeah, really enjoyed that. Um yeah, it was a little bit sort of scattergun, wasn't it? Sort of all over the place. But yeah, loads of good tales, some interesting music. Dad listens to MM, which um unheard of. Unheard of. I suppose as we get um guests who are a little bit younger than us, that then sort of I suppose the thing is though, when you think he'll be on BBC Radio 2 soon, wouldn't he? Mm.

Yeah. Well, this is what I was gonna say. I I was thinking when Tom's dad would have had the radio on in the car, MM would have obviously been mainstream on all stations, I'd imagine. But at the time it was very much well, it was new, wasn't it? It was a new sort of thing for someone to do that, especially a white guy as well, I suppose. But yeah, yeah. So yeah, I suppose it just goes to show, isn't it, why it's so popular if you've got dads playing it in the car as well as the young ones.

Oh yeah, I was I guess what, 20 years ago he came out at least, didn't he? Probably. Yeah, I'd say about 2000, wasn't it? And what Tom's in his 30s, I think he said. So yeah, yeah, I guess yeah, we've potentially got 10 years on him. So um, yeah, sort of makes sense, doesn't it? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, no, good episode. Enjoyed it. Yeah, please go and check him out. I'll read out his um his channel and then you can have a look at that. He's called that guy gray, uh G-R-A-Y at the end. Uh yeah, he's kind of making a go of it, doing content with all manner of different vehicles of different ages, different styles, etc. And he's great at chatting, very funny. Um, yeah, go and check him out. Nice little car collection as well. Yeah, Range Rover and Z4, Coop.

Yeah, I was just gonna get his Instagram up now. Oh yeah. Very uh dapper young man. Yeah, yeah. I can't say young because he's considerably younger than I am. So cool.

Okay, fantastic, John. Thank you very much. Yeah, thank you. We'll uh yeah, wrap it up and uh roll the credits.

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