DREAM WEAVER
This Saph track car traces a path from teenage yearning to grown-up mischief, via experimentation and even starting a dedicated business. It turns out, as Gary Wait proves, dreams can come true.
There’s often a single automotive spark that sets young boys and girls on the route to becoming lifelong, dyed-inthe-wool petrolheads. Perhaps little Jimmy might have been given a Ferrari Testarossa poster when he was 11, which helped to ignite a never-ending obsession with Italian supercars; maybe little Janey was brought up watching Knight Rider and The A-Team, and her driveway is now full of American V8 muscle. But for Gary Wait, it all began with a Fiat Punto.
No, wait, come back… stick with it, this’ll all start to make sense. “My turbo rush started with a Punto GT Turbo at the age of 18, which I then sold to fund a Cossie — at the time it was a no-brainer,” he explains. Aha, you see, it wasn’t the Fiat that beguiled him so much as the wooshy little snail hiding inside it. And when you combine that hedonistic forced-induction thrill with the fact that Gary actually owned a Mk2 Escort when he was just 11, you can starting piecing the jigsaw puzzle together. The race-honed Sapphire Cosworth before Ade’s lens today is simply an exercise in inevitability.
“Since I was 14 I’d seen K101 NNS, the (then black) Saph 4x4 I now own, running around my area,” Gary recalls, “and it always made me think ‘I want that car’. And with my dad having Ford passion and a Sapphire race car in the family, the inspiration was there in the blood already. So I bought the car from a customer of my dad’s, who was looking to get something more sensible; he gave me first refusal on the 4x4 and I snapped it up. It was the car I’d dreamed about owning for years, so why not? That excitement of driving my dream car was awesome.”
First stage
As bought, the 4x4 was in reasonably rude health, running a few tasty bolt-ons amounting to a hearty Stage 1 spec; Gary’s first trip to the dyno netted a verified 301 bhp, which certainly isn’t to be sniffed at. The car was operating at the ragged edge of its fuelling envelope though, so it was treated to a set of Bosch 803 injectors to ready it for further boost and general mischief. “I used it hard as an everyday road car, and for drag racing at Crail,” says Gary. “In Stage 3 road spec it pulled a 12.5 second quarter, which was about right for the 350-370 bhp-ish it had. But before long it was starting to show its age, so I decided to put it off the road and weld the bits on it that were under attack from metal kryptonite — the arches, sills and so on.” With the body rot dealt with, Gary welded in a rollcage and used the car here and there at Knockhill — still in Stage 3 spec, but now with a set of Wilwood four-pots and 300 mm discs on the front. “It had set the standard brakes on fire a few times,” he laughs. “The seals didn’t like the heat…”
But with one issue artfully dealt with, further troubles began to rear their heads until, by various quirks of circumstance, the Sapphire found itself parked up for a fair while. “I had just started working for myself to try and establish a Ford and RS Cosworth workshop for the central Scotland area,” Gary explains. “The Cossie was parked up after an engine issue, and times were a little hard in the beginning, so the car ended up sitting on the sidelines for a bit. Well, six years.” Ah, but what’s six years between friends? Gary’s owned this Sapphire for 14 years now, after all, so we may view this extended period of inactivity as a mere blip. The car was under cover, the suspension had been removed for a refurb, so… er, Gary bought another Cosworth. But of course.
“When you get the chance to snap up another Cossie, you just have to do it, don’t you?” Gary grins. “A G-plate 2wd Sapphire in Flint Grey came along, a proper rear-wheel drive hooligan wagon, and after a good shot of RWD I knew that if I was going properly racing in the 4x4 it’d have to become rear-wheel drive and have 500 bhp.” A further consideration was the transmission;
“EVEN WHEN YOU KNOW YOU SHOULD BACK OFF, IT’S HARD TO DO SO...”
from a purely practical view, the cost of a 4x4 race dog ’box was prohibitive, and having fitted a Getrag gearbox from a Jaguar into his road Sapphire, Gary was pretty confident in their abilities in terms of reliability.
Colour change
“I’ve been racing the Sapphire for a couple of years now in Frozen White, and now I’m thinking of taking it back to black,” he says. “Or black-and-white, or… oh, it’s a minefield!
“It’s a hell of a lot of fun though. I finished 10th this year in the Scottish Sports and Saloon Car Championship even although it has had some reliability issues due to lack of money and scraping the barrel to do what I love! Even when you know you should back off, it’s hard to do when you’re racing. It’s not in my nature! And even when you hear the rear tyres starting to shred, you keep it going until it don’t go no more…”
That’s just the sort of attitude that an 18 year-old in a Punto would be proud of. As an ambassador for GW Motorsport, Gary’s plucky, never-say-die Saph delivers the goods in spades. But as a fulfilment of his teenage dreams of force-induced mischief? Well, this Cossie’s pretty much perfect.
“IT WAS THE CAR I’D DREAMED ABOUT OWNING FOR YEARS, SO WHY NOT?”