Yeah

... and what they're doing and, and the price point they're doing it at.

So I think Formex actually.

Although a lot of their watches, you know, if you squint, kind of could look like any dive watch, could be anything.

They don't have the strongest brand identity.

But as far as innovation, it's there.

Uh, you know, there's brands that are doing things for the right reasons and, and then for the wrong reasons, you know, just cop- doing a, a cheap knockoff of someone else's model.

Which is fine

So my

contacts were, I knew, were in Carmarthen.

So I opened an account with LBS at the time.

They gave me a little bit of credit.

I had like three grand credit or something like that.

So I could go to someone, your fence is 1,200 quid, take a 600 pound deposit.

The materials would get delivered to the site.

Was that a conscious decision when you did the positioning of the brand and all of that? But you also don't just do pure high-end luxury because what's the definition of luxury? So talk a little bit around the positioning and kind of the luxury element versus actually some of the broader projects that you do.

What is it like going that fast? I can't even imagine going as fast as you go.

Yes, it's the hardest question to answer, because if you haven't tried it, I mean, I've been lucky to have the world's best day job flying jet fighters in the UK for the Royal Air Force, and I've also had the world's best holiday job driving straight-line race cars.

But the actual sensation of speed at 350, 400 miles an hour, the track itself is 105 feet wide, so the timing lights need to be able to adjust.

record the car going past.

So 105 foot wide and there's markers every quarter mile down the track.

Now, quarter mile sounds like quite a long way.

You know, it's taking about four or five minutes to walk that fast.

Is there a reason they continue to come back to the salt flats there in Bonneville?

When you are traveling 400 miles an hour, 650 kilometers an hour or so, presumably there's not much time to enjoy the stark beauty of the Salt Flats

Well, you know, strapping into the car and starting the engines, I can actually look down the, uh, the 12-mile-long racetrack.

Best racing surface in the world.

That's, you know, it's the reason that it's the spiritual home of the land speed record.

I'm actually sitting out on the Salt Flats right now looking into the distance, and it is quite literally somewhere you can see the curvature of the Earth.

It's a smooth, hard, consistent surface in excess of 10 miles long.

You can take cars up to very high speed and have the distance to slow them down safely again, and there's also the Bonneville Salt Flats itself.

What motivates you to take on that one extra challenge?

Amazing

...

it, it's fascinating what they've done with the technology.

And because, you know, it- if you're running a 40-ton digger, then battery isn't going to give you either the power you need.

It certainly, you know...

E- even if you put 10 tons of batteries in, you're still not gonna get the, uh, the power cycle you need, and it's gonna take forever to charge up again.

And a lot of these machines, because they're expensive and because construction is a get it, you know, get it done now kind of business, a lot of them need to work 24 hours a day.

Mm-hmm.

D- How, when did you hear about this? How did you know about it?

I first heard about the project around about March last year, so March 2025.

Uh, I was invited up to JCB to, uh, to discuss this new concept of, uh, taking, uh, the same architecture that they took to Bonneville 20 years ago, the, the JCB Dieselmax twin-engine, JCB digger engines with, uh, big turbos on the side, lots of power, and going to set a world land speed record.

Um, JCB did that so well 20 years ago that that is still the world's fastest diesel car, 350 mile an hour world record, which is, starting with two JCB digger engines, astonishing.

Um, of course, JCB's looking at the future.

What is the future of internal combustion? Because it's not burning distilled dinosaurs anymore.

Uh, that's, that's, that's becoming less and less popular.

Right.