by David Finlay (18 Apr 02)

The CARkeys office was in its usual state of industry and bustle. Correspondents were frantically chasing up the latest news from around the world. Manufacturers were jamming the switchboard in their rush to offer cars for us to test. Our super-computer, Deep Thought, was being fed motorsport press releases and trying to make sense of them. An inspiring sight, I thought.

"An inspiring sight, Flywheel," I mentioned to Rufus J. of that ilk as we sat in our favourite armchairs over in one corner, beside the aspidistra and underneath the graph showing the latest projections of who was likely to own how much of Daewoo in the next twelve months.

Flywheel looked into his glass of single malt and grunted. Obviously in one of his more philosophical moods. Suddenly he looked up and made an unexpected announcement.

"I wish I had a daughter," he said.

"Whose daughter," I asked after a moment's thought, "and for what purpose?" But before he could answer, our little oasis of calm was disrupted by the appearance of Robert Lewis, chattering excitedly about the fact that MG had just built a TF. We pointed out that MG had been building TFs for some time, but he explained that this particular TF was the 1,500,000th MG ever created.

It seemed to have caused him considerable excitement. "I've just written a story about this," he said. "Isn't it wonderful?" And off he trotted, scattering pieces of paper behind him.

Well, Well, Well

Mildly interested, I picked up one of the sheets, and the first thing that caught my eye was a reference to the MG RV8. The memories came flooding back.

"The memories have come flooding back, Flywheel," I said, and he grunted again. Heartened by this, I told him the story.

"It was back in '93, when the internet was in black and white and everything seemed possible," I began. "My motor racing career was in one of its frequent doldrum-like states. To my astonishment I had attracted sponsorship from a national radio station, but after the agreement had been made they switched from offering actual cash, which would have been very useful, to offering air time to promote other sponsors, which would have been fine if I had had any other sponsors.

"It was too late to get anything else sorted out for that season, so I ended up borrowing and competing in a motley collection of unlikely cars including a Vauxhall Nova, a Citroen 2CV and a Land-Rover Discovery."

Flywheel's emotion on hearing this was such that he closed his eyes and allowed his mouth to fall open.

"But I also drove another car that year, namely the MG RV8. You remember the press launch of that dubious device? Everyone thought it was absolutely terrible - a re-hash of the MGB with slightly smoother styling but no other discernible improvement. I remember my head coming into sharp contact with the roof supports every yard or so. Most unpleasant. But with its 3.9-litre V8 engine its performance was more than acceptable.

A Cunning Wheeze

"Desperate for something to race, I formulated a plan. I would ask Rover, or whatever the company parent company was called that week, if I could borrow an RV8 to compete in a hillclimb. Nothing would be required other than to tape up the headlights, stick numbers on the doors, put more air in the tyres and remove the spare wheel. A simple task even to one of my limited mechanical capabilities.

"But how, you ask, could a standard RV8 possibly be competitive in a hillclimb? I had thought this one through before making the suggestion. The particular hillclimb I had in mind had a class for what were loosely termed Thoroughbred cars. There was an unspoken understanding that the word 'thoroughbred' was synonymous with the word 'old', but there was no written definition to back this up, and it struck me that a brand new RV8 was so close to a decades-old MGB that it might be considered within the spirit of the class.

"The PR boss of Rover at that time was a sporting fellow and he agreed to make an RV8 available. The other Thoroughbred competitors made no objection, so the project was a goer.

"I would be the first to admit that the RV8 was no great shakes in the roadholding department, but nor was anything else against which it was competing. The regular winner of the class drove a six-cylinder Jaguar XJS, after all.

"It had rained the night before the event, so the morning practice runs were held on a wet track. I reckoned the RV8 had enough torque to make a good start in second gear, so I was able to keep wheelspin to a minimum. A change of tactics had to be employed for the official runs, when the track was dry, by which time the chap in the XJS was becoming seriously rattled by the fact that the RV8 was proving to be quicker.

"The day ended happily - having reverted to starting in first gear, I beat the XJS by about a tenth of a second on the final run, whereupon the Thoroughbred class organisers made an instant decision to ban RV8s from all further competition. Rotters. Still, there was nothing they could do about the result. And that, Flywheel, is how your old friend made history by scoring the RV8's first, and I dare say only, victory in any form of motorsport."

Hearing his name mentioned, Flywheel opened his eyes sharply, took a sip from his glass of single malt, and surveyed the still hectic CARkeys office.

"An inspiring sight," he agreed.

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