Shownotes
In this episode of the Backseat Driver podcast, we sit down with esteemed rally driver Simon Daly, who shares his deep passion for rallying—particularly his admiration for Skoda vehicles. Simon reflects on how his early experiences in motorsport, shaped by family influence, played a crucial role in his journey. He fondly recalls his uncles introducing him to the thrill of rallying, including unforgettable moments at legendary events like the RAC Rally. These formative years ignited a lifelong enthusiasm that has driven his career in the sport.
Our discussion delves into Simon’s remarkable collection of ex-works Skoda rally cars, which not only showcase his dedication but also connect him to the brand’s storied motorsport heritage. As we explore the evolution of rallying, nostalgia and personal history take center stage, highlighting the craftsmanship and legacy of Skoda in the sport. Whether you’re a rally enthusiast or new to the world of motorsport, this episode offers a fascinating insight into the passion, history, and technical artistry behind rallying.
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Transcripts
I'd like to welcome to the Backseat Driver, a rally driver.
Speaker A:He's somebody I've known on and off for a long time.
Speaker A:The one thing that sets the one, the Only Simon Daly Esq.
Speaker A:Apart is he likes rallying Skodas.
Speaker A:He likes rallying ex works scoders to a degree.
Speaker A:I think he's got a collection of ex work scoreder Ellicois, I think Skoda in the old Czech Republic.
Speaker A:Ring him up and say, I've got one of these knocking about, have you?
Speaker A:Simon.
Speaker A:Simon Daly, welcome to the Backseat Driver.
Speaker B:Thank you very much for having me.
Speaker A:Mark, how did Roy come about?
Speaker A:Because one of the last times I saw you rally and it wasn't a Skoda, you were thrashing your wife's 340 Volvo around the place in the middle of the night.
Speaker A:You could smelt brakes and clutch a long while before we could see you.
Speaker A:But you have come on a long way.
Speaker A:But where did it start?
Speaker B:That's a good question.
Speaker B:It might be a recurring theme throughout this conversation, but have you.
Speaker B:Have you ever seen the film Sliding Doors?
Speaker A:No.
Speaker B:So it's the concept is that a little moment in time could completely change your entire path.
Speaker B:That you like the butterfly effect.
Speaker B:Absolutely.
Speaker B:Absolutely that.
Speaker B:So rallying for me was something from a family point of view.
Speaker B:My uncles were all sort of cool, exciting people to me when I was a young lad.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker B:They all had company cars or Pull Mountain GTs, Astra GTE.
Speaker A:That was in the days when the number of letters on the back counted for.
Speaker B:Absolutely, yeah.
Speaker A:It could be carded if you got a Cavalier L, you weren't doing well.
Speaker B:No, absolutely not.
Speaker B:And if you had four wheel drive, four wheel steering, gli, gti, Turbo, you'd mad it.
Speaker B:So they were heavily into motorsports.
Speaker B:So the thing that they used to take me at sort of age 5 were things like go karting stock cars.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker B:All over the Northwest and in Yorkshire, Bradford Sheffield, Blackburn.
Speaker B:I'm sure you've been to all.
Speaker A:I went to the Blackbird one at the old dog tracks.
Speaker B:Yeah, absolutely fantastic.
Speaker B:They ganu.
Speaker B:I think it's a Tesco's.
Speaker A:It's a Tesco's now.
Speaker A:They completely ruined it.
Speaker B:Absolutely.
Speaker B:But against butterfly effect.
Speaker B:My first time that I ever drove a vehicle was on that Tesco car park and it was my uncle's Astra gte.
Speaker B:So it was a pretty nice car to start off with.
Speaker B:But at the time then they used to take me on an annual pilgrimage to the RAC rally.
Speaker B:So from being very young, I was seeing Audi Quattros from the Group B Europe, Opel Mantas.
Speaker B:And then proper rally cars driven by proper drivers, proper men who could keep it up all night in the toughest of conditions.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:So fantastic time to get into motorsport.
Speaker B:And from then I were hooked.
Speaker B:It was only going to be a matter of time before I came back and was on the other side of the steering wheel, so to speak.
Speaker A:So what was the first rally car?
Speaker B:Right, so first.
Speaker B:So the first car I ever bought for Motorsport was a Renault 4 which had the umbrella in the centre of the dashboard.
Speaker B:Absolutely.
Speaker A:Was they very successful little rally cars?
Speaker B:It was, yes.
Speaker B:I think the Slogan behind the Renault 4 was, if you're not friends with your passenger at the start of the journey, you will be at the end.
Speaker B:Because every time you went round the bend it was on two wheels, you got very close in the middle.
Speaker B:So that was the first car that I ever used for something called auto testing.
Speaker B:And that's going between cones, handbrake turns and reverse flicks.
Speaker B:I then progressed onto a Mini and became an autotech champion in the northwest.
Speaker B:And then my first ever rally car was actually a Mark 1 Fiesta.
Speaker B:A road rally car.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker B:And I used to do local 12 cars and things like that and meet up with old legends like Malcolm Graham, who you had on this show.
Speaker B:Not alone.
Speaker A:Yes, the one, the only mark of the man, Graham.
Speaker B:Yes, indeed.
Speaker B:I think he calls himself the Gob.
Speaker B:And I wouldn't argue he even has.
Speaker A:His registration up with Gob, doesn't he?
Speaker B:He does indeed.
Speaker A:Which he claims is for Graham's old banger.
Speaker A:But we all know it's the fact, even after he had his operation, that his co driver, Charlie Woodward said he can't talk as much as we all know for the fact, Charlie, you tell lies.
Speaker A:You still can't shut Malcolm up, no matter what happens.
Speaker B:I don't think they'll ever do and who would want to?
Speaker B:So I guess ultimately then, as well as sort of doing local club level stuff, I was still going out with my uncles watching the RAC rally and I guess we got to around 88.
Speaker B:I was in a motorsport club.
Speaker A:I've said this time and time and time again, the local motor clubs were the breeding ground of rally drivers.
Speaker A:Some went on to do absolutely nothing, some went on to become world champions.
Speaker B:Absolutely.
Speaker B:And everyone were just so friendly to everyone else.
Speaker B:If someone could help you, they really would.
Speaker B:If you were doing a rally and you were struggling for a couple of tires or something like that, there were always someone who wanted to help you out so fantastic.
Speaker B:I remember Spring Hill Car Club standing room.
Speaker B:Only over a hundred people in that room listening to the exciting stories that people were telling about the events that they'd done in the previous weeks and I guess just that butterfly effect again.
Speaker B:So, 88.
Speaker B:I'm on the RAC rally in our local motor club.
Speaker B:Duncan Forrester was a navigator in the Wurtzkoda team and he used to come to the club telling us about all these exploits in Eastern Europe where they were going, doing testing and they'd just chuck a number plate on the car and just set off flat out around the local town and the police just used to wave them through at the junctions, all perfectly legal.
Speaker B:It was okay in Czech Republic or Czechoslovakia.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:I mean, the one thing people don't realize.
Speaker A:18 Whenever it was when they started, they were called Ellen Kay, Laurel and Clement.
Speaker A:Vaclav Laurel.
Speaker A:Vaclav Clement, an engineer and a bookbinder, have always competed.
Speaker A:They did the huge rallies, the Alpines, things like that.
Speaker A:They entered every race and every rally they could and did well in them.
Speaker A:And then when Skoda bought them because they hit hard times.
Speaker A:Skoda is a family name.
Speaker A:It's not like an amalgam of lettuce to make a word.
Speaker A:It's a family.
Speaker A:The Skoda family are still in existence.
Speaker A:In the 30s they did tremendously well in the Monte Carlo.
Speaker A:And then after the Russians and Uncle Joel Stalin got eased out of Czechoslovakia, they were able to then go European and global with their racing cars and rally cars, which they always did.
Speaker A:But in the Russian period, they weren't allowed to rally in the West.
Speaker A:But I mean, you people like John Oglund and people like that with the Estelles, they never didn't win the class in the RAC of the Monty, did they?
Speaker B:Yeah, it was again, all part of that rich heritage.
Speaker B:And absolutely as scored as.
Speaker B:They didn't tend to compete for overall honours, but they were fighting for class wins.
Speaker B:And as I was saying, so Duncan Forrester, he was exciting to me.
Speaker B:He was telling us about the stuff that he were doing in these Skodas.
Speaker A:Well, just butting in as well.
Speaker A:The Skoda Z drove, you could go to your local Skoda dealer and one like it to a degree, will be sat at showroom for sale.
Speaker B:Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker B:So, and Skoda, ultimately it was grassroots.
Speaker B:Multiple.
Speaker B:Yeah, check, check.
Speaker A:Without being really cheap coins.
Speaker B:They were very cheap.
Speaker B:But interestingly, because one of the benefits of having all these score derelicts that I've got, I get to meet a lot of people, we were about in the Day that rallied those cars and Wendy first did what was called the Skoda Trophy.
Speaker B:So it was a sort of semi sponsored by the manufacturer rally championship.
Speaker B:Essentially, if you bought all the stuff, the roll cage, the suspension, the wheels, tires and brakes and stuff as part of the kit, all off to make a rally car off Skoda, they give you a car.
Speaker B:No other manufacturer at the time had anything like that.
Speaker A:I'd never heard of that, but what a fantastic idea.
Speaker B:And ultimately, these cars just came out of nowhere.
Speaker B:It was a way to shift people out of the old John Oakland Group B rear wheel drive scintill, front wheel drive scoreder favourites that I rally today.
Speaker B:So, yeah, so for me, I was looking at the cars coming down the stages back in 88, 89 through to 93.
Speaker A:Nighttime, full set of spotlights.
Speaker A:I can remember spotlights at home.
Speaker A:You don't like doing that.
Speaker B:Absolutely glowing brake discs in the dark, freezing cold, of course, middle of November, having a long trek from a car park somewhere in the middle of Kilda, Paris.
Speaker B:And I always made my uncles wait until the score does have come through because our guys at the motor club were in one of these works cars.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker B:So essentially then I was watching a car that I would go on many years later to buy and use today.
Speaker B:So the other skills I dream, when.
Speaker A:You saw a scoreder on the road, I mean, they were a bit of a joke at times, but that was.
Speaker A:I mean, it's like the old joke.
Speaker A:Why the scores have heated rear windscreens, keep your hands well when you're pushing them.
Speaker B:Absolutely, yeah.
Speaker A:What do you call the convertible Skoda?
Speaker A:A skip.
Speaker A:But I mean, all these jokes, those in the know realize these cars weren't a joke, they were serious cars and they went well.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:I mean, so the card that I probably use the most, and I've got seven scores, I was gonna say, how.
Speaker A:Many of these things have you got?
Speaker B:I've got seven Skoda favourites with roll cages here.
Speaker B:And I.
Speaker B:I think I've got two that don't have roll cages in, but I have two sets of roll cages.
Speaker B:So if I pushed, I could have nine.
Speaker B:And it's.
Speaker B:Yeah, I guess it's an addiction.
Speaker B: at the moment was used on the: Speaker B:And in 93, that was the year Colin McRae went out with a blown engine.
Speaker B:And you are?
Speaker B:Kankenham with Nikki Grist.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker B:Won the rally and our own Malcolm Wilson was third and that was like a really good result for a British driver.
Speaker B:My car finished 40th.
Speaker B:You have a role on that, but.
Speaker A:Where in each class.
Speaker B:And it was second.
Speaker B:And I spoke today to Vladimir Berger in Czech Republic.
Speaker B:They love motorsport and they're looking forward to hearing this show outing.
Speaker A:Yes.
Speaker A:The old Dry Stone radio backseat drive radio show is gaining even more overseas.
Speaker A:I mean, I have listeners in Russia, Brazil, all over the place.
Speaker A:France and Lancashire and Yorkshire.
Speaker B:Of course, the Czech team stopped worrying about Russia when the wall went down.
Speaker B:So they might think you can keep those listeners.
Speaker B:But yes.
Speaker B:So Vladimir Berger was in what they call the group Bank.
Speaker B:Are you mentioned before about you could go to the shoring.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker B:And pretty much buy that car.
Speaker A:The grouping car was more or less showroom to a degree.
Speaker A:Was it okay to have things done to it to strengthen it?
Speaker A:But ultimately, I mean, the back seats were still on.
Speaker A:They were virtually a showroom standard car.
Speaker B:You could literally take that car, put some safety equipment in it, some roll cage stuff, seats, harnesses, suspension, update the brakes and that you would retirement equipment.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:Or else you wore your big time X.
Speaker B:Well, given that it was only 13 horsepower and 13cc on 70 horsepower, they needed a calendar to do the timing.
Speaker A:So they didn't really need to work.
Speaker B:Drive about tight bends.
Speaker A:Because he'd never be going fast enough to read.
Speaker B:Well, yeah.
Speaker B:So using the brakes was a last resort.
Speaker B:So.
Speaker B:Yes.
Speaker B:So basically I watched this car back in 93 and then years later I was rallying.
Speaker B:I was then in a maestro rally car.
Speaker A:Maestro.
Speaker B:Maestro.
Speaker B:So you admit to has finally come out.
Speaker B:It's all true.
Speaker B:And it was again, I really enjoyed that grassroots motorsport.
Speaker B:The car was prepared by a genius, Dave Marsden, who just put that car together after many years of trying to build the perfect Maestro, who's doggedly determined to make it effective.
Speaker B:And he couldn't do a great deal to tune it, so he basically give it a bit more compression and did a lot around the gearing.
Speaker B:So the gearing on it was amazing.
Speaker B:To the point we went out when I bought the car off him and went down what I might call my local test route.
Speaker B:And at the end of it I said, well, what do you think?
Speaker B:Where can I improve?
Speaker B:And he said, tell you we can improve.
Speaker B:Don't let me sit in the car with you ever again.
Speaker B:And he said, I'll be honest with you, I could never make that car go anywhere near as fast, but I'm looking forward to seeing what you did.
Speaker B:And we did incredibly well with the car.
Speaker B:I had some really top class navigators in with me like Ian Tully and Paul Onberg and ultimately then started to get some fantastic results.
Speaker B:At that time, the Wurtz Koda had sort of done the World Rally Championship, moved into the British Championship and then sort of hidden in a garage for maybe 10 years.
Speaker A:Because that's the one thing ex works rally cars.
Speaker A:It's like the fight.
Speaker A:Somebody said, I've got a genuine ex Works rally car.
Speaker A:Well, it's actually genuine because after about three stages it had wheels, tires, gearbox and brakes changed, so it ceased to be original.
Speaker A:But when they come to the end of their competitive life for the manufacturer who owns their own works cars, they become obsolescent and they don't want them anymore.
Speaker A:What do we do with these things?
Speaker A:Because half of them get parked up somewhere and just rot.
Speaker B:Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker B:So the history of this one is it was used by the works team.
Speaker B:They brought it over.
Speaker B:You mentioned earlier, scored had a great tradition of winning its club class.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:And what they didn't always tell you in the magazines is they won the class 25 times in the last 25 years.
Speaker A:All right.
Speaker B:But sometimes, yeah, they might have entered a couple of classes if you'd had a bit of a lean year.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker B:So in this particular year they wanted to say, we've won our class so many times.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker B:In so many years.
Speaker B: kit car class with the: Speaker B:And ultimately the idea being that they would get the class win.
Speaker B:So ultimately the works driver in my car came second in class, unfortunately.
Speaker B:But they did win the other classes they'd entered.
Speaker B:And so we're able to get that magazine article to say, we've won our class 25 times in the last couple years.
Speaker B:From there it went to Skoda gb.
Speaker B:They then used it in the British Championship.
Speaker B:And what they then did in Scuder GB Land is with the top of the one Mate championship, which scored a trophy championship and they used it as a prize drive.
Speaker B:So 93, it was the works chat team.
Speaker B:94, it did rally GB RAC rally with scored a GB.
Speaker B:Then 95, they used it as a prize drive with a person who won the trophy championship and then they sold it to him and he was called Carl Stevens.
Speaker B:We don't know what happened in 96.
Speaker B:It's a bit of a dark year in terms of the car's history.
Speaker B:But in 97 he went and did the British Open championship and won his class in class N1.
Speaker B:He won the championship, which with Fiskoda, they'd moved on to the Feluccio back then, so they were quite keen.
Speaker A:Well, we're going to say that was the time when the favorite went out of production.
Speaker A:Its replacement visually was radically different.
Speaker A:The favorite was what you might call a slightly old fashioned looking car, where his replacement was a modding car.
Speaker A:Skoda, like everybody else, has to modernize the looks.
Speaker A:So it would have looked, it would have looked out of date quite quickly compared to the one that came after him.
Speaker B:Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker B:One of the interesting things through its history in 97, that's when Cole put a private plate on it.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker B:And you, you spoke earlier about is a works car.
Speaker B:A works car.
Speaker B:I know they're a bit like triggers brush, five new handles and six new brushes.
Speaker B:So I guess ultimately it changed its ID as well in that it had a different registration on it.
Speaker B:But that's been part of the exciting challenge of owning a car like that.
Speaker A:I mean, how much your favorite favorite is factory?
Speaker B:It's a good question.
Speaker B:So.
Speaker B:So the absolute original bits of the shell.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker B:The suspension is leader and they've still got the records back in the factory for that car.
Speaker B:Yeah, it's got the original seats and harnesses, the steering wheel from Skoda.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:And then there's lots of stuff on the shell that you just don't know is work sports until you do something.
Speaker B:So for example, I took it to the NEC Classic Car show a few years ago and somebody came out to the woodwork and said, you know, I've got a rally jacket from that era.
Speaker B:And if you look at photos from the snowy RAC rallies out in November, you'll always see in the back of a lot of the works cars at the time, it's jacket hanging up behind the dryder.
Speaker B:So we, we negotiated on the price of this jacket and then I went to hang it up in the back of the car.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker B:And when I went to hang it up, there's this big stainless steel hook.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker B:I went, well, that just must be what scored a favourite.
Speaker B:Sabin and I put it on and there were a couple of scoreder favourites on the Skoda stand at the NEC and had a look and it turns out that's a works part, a stainless steel puzzle to put your jacket on.
Speaker B:And it's little things like that that you discover over time.
Speaker B:The guys in check.
Speaker B:I have a lot of conversations with the museum, the ex works drivers and they're always telling you some little detail about the car that you haven't Even noticed.
Speaker B:And that was a period modification.
Speaker B:So like for example, at the back with the wheel wellies, there's a little sort of bar in the back.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker B:So they used to have a big jack with big long bar in.
Speaker B:They put it up there and it did just locate and lift the bike right up in one instead of having to lift one side up.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker B:And you don't even notice stuff like that when you're working on the car.
Speaker B:But it's when you're talking to these guys and goes.
Speaker B:It's still got its jacking point in the back.
Speaker B:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker B:So it's little things like that.
Speaker B:So what's original?
Speaker B:The shell and all that kind of stuff.
Speaker B:Most of the detail inside it.
Speaker B:It's even got a Czech version of a bronze trip meter.
Speaker B:That's all in cyrillicoi in Czech.
Speaker B:Anyway.
Speaker B:So there's lots of period details.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker A:I mean the engine.
Speaker A:It probably won't be its original engine, will it?
Speaker B:Sadly not.
Speaker B:So the.
Speaker B:So I was just about to tell you I competed on some road rallies.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker B:Against that car because it disappeared into the doldrums somewhere in someone's garage.
Speaker B:And then they sold it to someone who did the Lombard Revival Rally.
Speaker B: Oh, yeah, the: Speaker B:And then it shifted on.
Speaker B:It had to be playing then.
Speaker B:So all the D girls had gone.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker B:And then it went on and did some road rallies with the guy who rallied a Lauder.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker B:And he thought.
Speaker B:He thought he'd have a go with a front wheel drive car.
Speaker B:Didn't like it and parked it up for another 10 years until I bought it.
Speaker A:So what state was it in with.
Speaker B:You, Bo Shell wise, it was pretty good.
Speaker B:It had been hand brush painted with magnolia.
Speaker B:It looked like someone's living room when I first got it.
Speaker B:But generally you can just tell sometimes with a car just with the gaps between the doors and things like that that it hasn't had too hard of life.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:So.
Speaker B:And then a quick look round.
Speaker B:This guy told me it was an Axe works car.
Speaker B:But people do.
Speaker A:It's a little bit like the number of times you get a Mark 1 Lotus Ford Cortina.
Speaker A:Jim Clark drove it.
Speaker A:Jim.
Speaker A:No, Jim Clark didn't drive it.
Speaker A:But according to most people, every Lotus, Ford Cortina ever built, Jim Clark drove it.
Speaker B:He must have been busy driving.
Speaker B:Well, there were a lot of people works drivers just going around driving rally cars as well.
Speaker B:So basically this guy said it was a genuine works car.
Speaker B:We got there, there was nothing really on the car to tell you that it was.
Speaker B:And then he gave me.
Speaker B:We sort of did the deal.
Speaker B:I took the stuff off him and there was a big pack of stuff.
Speaker B:Stuff.
Speaker B:And there's a little wallet in there.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker B:I said, what's this thing?
Speaker B:And it looked a little bit like a passport in a really well used, sort of dried up plastic wallet.
Speaker B:He said, I don't know, it's in Czech.
Speaker B:I'm bothered with it.
Speaker B:So in the fan on the way home.
Speaker B:So we've got it on the trailer, we're driving down the motorway and if I just ripped it open to see what was in it.
Speaker B:And it's the car's original passport from.
Speaker B:From the Skoda works team.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker B:And it tells you every rally that it did, where it finished, what they needed to change on the car.
Speaker B:So in terms of up until the point it left the works team, I could tell you exactly who'd driven it, what events had done, what had been changed on the car.
Speaker B:Sadly, some of that information's lost to time, but now we started to, like, keep a really detailed record of all the things it does so well.
Speaker A:Not being funny, the one of the.
Speaker A:You said one of the reasons you got into score the rally cars, X Works cars, they were cheap.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:I mean no disrespect, the value of your X Works score, the fabric compared to an X Works Mark 1 Escort Twin Cam are chasms apart.
Speaker B:Absolutely.
Speaker A:They are still ex Works coys and they're still out there doing what they build them to do.
Speaker B:Absolutely.
Speaker B:And I guess ultimately, for someone like me, I've never had a massive amount of money to put into motorsport.
Speaker B:It absolutely is a hobby.
Speaker B:I also a sticker on the back of a rally car and it said working to pay for rallying.
Speaker B:And that might sum my life up a little bit.
Speaker B:But, yeah, I've never been in the Works Escort league and to be honest, I never expected to be in the work Skoda league either.
Speaker B:It was simply the right place at the right time.
Speaker B:In fact, to be honest, I'm embarrassed to say, I went over to buy some lights for an existing Skoda favourite rally car that I already had.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker B:And he'd sort of told me he got this car.
Speaker B:So I took the trailer just in case.
Speaker B:But I'd really sort of thought, I'm probably not going to buy this, you know, And I bought it on the strength of the car itself.
Speaker B:And then it was just such a bonus.
Speaker B:It turned out to be a school by dream.
Speaker B:And it was a car.
Speaker B:I was stood in the side as keel, the car flying past me.
Speaker B:Not quite the one driven by and navigated by Duncan Forrester back in the club that day, but in the same factory at the same sort of time that he would go and that butterfly effect has just sort of followed the whole thing around.
Speaker B:It's been.
Speaker B:And I'm very lucky and.
Speaker B:And I appreciate that I conclude you've.
Speaker A:Got rid of the Dulux finish and got.
Speaker A:Made it look like what it did.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:So that.
Speaker B:That's a challenge again.
Speaker B:I mean because did you have to.
Speaker A:Talk to SC about the correct decals and liveries and everything else or.
Speaker A:Cuz back then a lot of the photographs of it would have been black and white.
Speaker B:They absolutely were Mark and that.
Speaker B:It's a real good point.
Speaker B:So.
Speaker B:So it's all sometimes a question of timing, isn't it?
Speaker B:So I started to do some research on Macara and I'm very lucky.
Speaker B:My old uncles, yeah part of what they did is got collections of rally sport and all that sort of stuff.
Speaker B:So I was able to go around get boxes of rally sports from the late 80s and early 90s and actually found the car a few times in those magazines.
Speaker B:And I guess from then it was a case of.
Speaker B:I went to actually a dealer, a sticker woman called Donna Coop down in the south and she from you know the little 1 in 43 scale.
Speaker B:Oh yes.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker C:I bought Mini Champs.
Speaker B:I bought a sticker kit for one of those from Rad Scholar.
Speaker B:I sent it down to her and she blew it up and created the sticker kit from there and that's where we put on.
Speaker B:Unfortunately the V's were just about a centimeter short so it didn't just quite work out perfect but good enough to get us out and get us on the road at demo events.
Speaker A:Just out of interest were it sponsors check with the.
Speaker B:So what you intended to do.
Speaker B:They were.
Speaker B:They were very relaxed about the sponsor.
Speaker B:So they had some big sponsors like Castrol and Sparco.
Speaker B:But then when they were doing local rallies, sometimes each individual car would have its own local sponsorship on it.
Speaker B:So for example in with the works team for the majority of the cars they were on Pirelic.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker B:And Hellers.
Speaker B:For this group end car it was on Dunlops Piaas.
Speaker B:And they were very relaxed about who they take sponsorship money from.
Speaker B:Yeah, well I suppose being where they.
Speaker A:Were from Eastern Europe at the time, money was money and they weren't too fussy about where it might be coming from.
Speaker B:Well I can't speak for that but I'm guessing you might be right.
Speaker A:So how long did it take you to put it back to how it, how it should look.
Speaker B:So it didn't take too long.
Speaker B:So.
Speaker B:And again I seem to be doing quite a bit of name dropping.
Speaker B:So Tim Foster, who you know from back in the day from rallying out of Body Shop, he kindly sort of like between Christmas and New Year, got one of his guys to paint the car up back into original color.
Speaker B:I got the sticker kit put on just before an event called Race Retro.
Speaker C:Yes.
Speaker B:And that was its first event back out of retirement.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker B:At Race Retro.
Speaker B:And.
Speaker B:And it sort of went literally viral.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker A:On Facebook because it's been at this year for the simple reason he's going to starring Classical Sports Car magazine along with your good self.
Speaker B:Of course it is indeed.
Speaker B:And so I've been to lots of different events and having something like this is a passport into a world a schoolboy all them years ago could only dream of.
Speaker B:And so we've been to places like Goodwood Festival of Speed through the rally stage, chatting to people like Sebastian Loeb on the last day and Sebastian Auger and the last day that we were there, Sebastian Auger been through the stage in the Citroen.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker B:And that was a Sunday and it was really rainy.
Speaker B:And if you've ever done the Goodwood Forest stage, the surface once it's rain is akin to toothpaste, so it's not the best for grit.
Speaker B:And we've got some little forest tires on the front.
Speaker B:We were just chatting to him while we were waiting to go on the stage and said to him, what's it like in there?
Speaker B:He says oh really, really slippy.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker B:And I said oh yeah, yeah.
Speaker B:I said so.
Speaker B:But he says be careful.
Speaker B:And I said are these tyres okay?
Speaker B:He said they're okay, you'll be fine.
Speaker B:And I said to him so a little bit like Monte Carlo in there.
Speaker B:He says yeah, but in Monte Carlo, Simon, we go on slicks.
Speaker B:I said sebastian, do I need slicks?
Speaker B:He says no, Simon now no slick.
Speaker B:So you just don't meet people like that.
Speaker A:They are a more down to earth bunch of the rally compared to my ex lot, the roundy roundy boys.
Speaker A:But I mean the one thing is do, do you ever, apart from the guy you talk, you talk to regularly, has it ever been driven by one of its ex drivers?
Speaker A:Have you ever let any of them behind back behind its wheel?
Speaker B:So actually not last year, year before when Chris Ingram won the European Rally Championship.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker B:He came to Race Retro and at the time he was just about to announced a Deal where he was going to drive Skoda for parts of the World Rally Championship.
Speaker B:We thought it'd be really good if he got an opportunity to drive the car, albeit a little bit slower than the scored Fairview WRC car, but a scored role, the same.
Speaker B:So he drove it a couple of years ago at the same event was a driver who drove it as scored.
Speaker B:A GB Works driver.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:And I, I, I tried to get him in the car but he, he, he didn't want to get in and his brother said if he gets in, he'll spend a fortune on rally cars again.
Speaker B:That's why he don't want to get in.
Speaker B:So, so we haven't got any of the Czech Works drivers here yet, but I do get invited to Czech quite often.
Speaker B:I haven't been yet, but that's one of the ambitions, to take the car over there and get that driven by Vladimir Berger, who was the original driver.
Speaker A:What do you intend doing with all the others?
Speaker B:It's a good question.
Speaker B:We're going to run out of time.
Speaker A:What do you have to ask?
Speaker A:What are you going to be doing with all them?
Speaker B:Yes, well, I've only got the one, of course, Mark, if my wife's listening.
Speaker B:So I guess ultimately it's of those things.
Speaker B:So when it went viral after race Retro, people come out of the woodwork and say, you know what?
Speaker B:I think I've got a headlight for one of them.
Speaker B:You go around to garage and there's a full rally car there and they go, well, do you want to buy it?
Speaker B:And you think to yourself, where else am I going to buy some, some spares if something goes wrong?
Speaker B:So anyway, I think I've got enough now.
Speaker A:And you were saying before we went on air, the ex driver, Mr.
Speaker A:Burger, the car and you got a mention on Czech television.
Speaker B:We did indeed.
Speaker B:So I got a tip off that Vladimir was going on Czech TV and I sat there a little bit disappointed that they hadn't gone to the trouble of captions.
Speaker B:There was a lot in check and sadly my check isn't very good.
Speaker B:So I didn't really understand what was going on.
Speaker B:But at one point in the interview I got the phrase RAC Rally Simon Daly, and I think that was the only English he spoke through the entire thing.
Speaker B:But I actually rung him today on messenger or message him today and asked him what his views were on the RAC role because obviously for them it was a big adventure coming to Great Britain and he said it was the absolute pinnacle of his driving career.
Speaker B:He only ever Finished second in class when he came over, but that didn't dampen his spirits.
Speaker B:He absolutely loved the RAC Rally for him, the absolute number one rally in the world and the best thing he did in his 40 year rallying career.
Speaker A:And the other thing is, no matter how you look at it, he's definitely David and Goliath.
Speaker A:These tiny little cars from the Czech Czechoslovaki the Czech Republic as it is now, going out there and finishing these events, winning their class, but finishing these events, which is more than a lot of the serious big works cars and drivers did.
Speaker A:They used to bend them round trees where the little scaulders went out there.
Speaker B:And did the business.
Speaker B:You mentioned earlier, Drew Penn, which was pretty much showroom conditions.
Speaker B:They also had something called Group A, which we could have a much stronger gearbox, a limited slip diff, better engine and all that sort of stuff.
Speaker B:A lot lighter fiberglass panels and things.
Speaker B:Well, one of those cars on the same rally in 93 finished 15th overall, just three places behind David Llewellyn in an Astra GTA.
Speaker B:And there again, it is a butterfly effect.
Speaker A:Simon Daly, it's been a pleasure chatting to you.
Speaker A:I'm talking about one of my favorite brands.
Speaker A:I like Skoda's.
Speaker A:I have one sat in the driveway.
Speaker A:Phenomenal Coys, much underrated.
Speaker A:They have a phenomenal history and competition history.
Speaker A:So never mind buying the thing from Germany with a V and a W up front, go out and get yourself a Skoda.
Speaker A:If you want an ex work Skoda, it's probably more than likely you'll have to contact Simon Daly about getting your mitts on one.
Speaker A:But once again, Simon Daly, thanks very much for joining me on the backseat driver.
Speaker B:Thank you.
