Ep 199 HSRCA Spring Festival

I'm standing with Michael.

He's got a rather nice Simca Arand in front of me.

And one of the things I like about Simcas is the fact that it's part of my history.

My first three cars that I bent on the road were Simcas.

You bent?

I bent, yeah.

I put two vans into, one in the back of a lorry and one into the front of a lorry when I was about 18.

Yeah, it was in the UK, South Wales, Old South Wales.

The van, one of the vans, I'd only, it was the week after I did a Jim Russell racing driver's course, and my colleagues called me Sterling, and then I went and stuffed the van into the front of a truck.

Which, yeah, a bit of understeer.

And then the 850 was rear-engined, and I spun that into a wall one damp night, which wasn't too far away from where I stuffed the one of the vans up as well.

So when I saw this Simcoe, I thought, this one's in better condition than I left mine.

So tell me a bit more about it.

It was bought new by a chap called Hector McWilliam, who bought it from York Motors Pty Ltd, 101 William Street, Sydney.

He was in Churros.

And I inherited the car, I got the car from his descendants in Turos and then gave it to my brother Jeff who built it into a race car.

And my brother Jeff, God bless his soul, he's passed away and I've inherited it and I've decided to bring it back to the track.

to kind of honour him is what he's done.

But it's been a little bit of a journey because to bring it back to scratch to compete modernly, we had to do a little bit with clutches, gearboxes, suspension, seats, all those sorts of things.

But it's been great, actually.

It's good.

This is the first run I've had in it seriously.

Yep.

And I was quite pleasantly surprised.

I was a little, how would you say this, a little abrancy before I, on the dummy grid sitting there going, oh boy, this is going to be a handful.