Graham Robson
Graham rues missed opportunities, including chances to buy ex-Works cars.
Yes I know, it happens to every petrolhead at some point or another – the fact that we sometimes have the sort of dream which involves us buying, or keeping, our dream car, then waking up in a cold sweat and knowing that it never happened. And being angry with ourselves – which isn’t easy to deal with at three o’clock in the morning! I’d better admit that I have a list of ‘cars that got away,’ and I still regret in some ways ever letting any of it happen.
Let's start this rather long list with my very first car, a 20-year-old MG TA which almost broke my personal bank (£275!) in 1958. It leaked, either from the poorly fitting hood and side-screens or through the wooden floorboards, it blew a crankshaft main bearing, and my girlfriends hated it. I traded it in for a mere £175 a year later in favour of a near-new Austin A35, which was followed by an early Mini. I must have been mad.
Then there was the chance to buy an ex-Works Triumph TR4 rally car (4 VC) in 1964, the sort that I had managed in the factory’s Works team. It had already endured a hard life, which unfortunately I knew all about, so I turned down the chance and kept my Spitfire MkI. Triumph test driver Gordon Birtwistle bought it instead,
TR Register stalwart Ian Cornish acquired it in 1969, it is now a treasured high-value icon in the club, and I've been trying to buy it back ever since. Later, when I became one of the original contributors to Classic Cars magazine, (sorry Mr Editor, I will not mention that again,) there was an intriguing Jensen 541R on the staff which I lusted after, made an offer for and was re-buffed. Later, it suddenly became available, but I had lost interest, for I had just bought my first brand-new Ford Capri 2-litre Mk2.
It was at around this time, in the 1970s, that racing driver Jack Sears once took me proudly out to a garage at his Norfolk farm, flung open the doors and showed me his ‘pension fund,’ which was a then-obsolete Ferrari 250 GTO. I should have been thinking along similar, if more modest, lines.
Then there was the mid to late 1970s, when I was heavily involved in the rally scene. Like almost every other observer who saw them, heard them, and ( just occasionally) was privileged to sit in one,
I fell hopelessly in love with the Lancia Stratos. The fact that I was really too large to get comfortable in the tiny cockpit didn’t help. (Am I allowed to name-drop by confirming that both Markku Alen and Walter Rohrl admitted to the same problem, but they wanted to drive a winning car, so they put up with the problem?)
When Lancia ‘retired’ the Stratos at the end of 1977, there were lots of road-car versions on the market at very reasonable prices. I could have afforded one right then, but since I also had two small sons, and a mortgage-eating house in Cumbria to take my attention too, I made one of the biggest mistakes of my motoring life and passed up the opportunity.
I added to that calamitous decision two years later, for at the end of the 1970s rallying rule changes were on the way, and I could certainly have acquired more than one truly competitive Works rally car. But I was no rally driver, so what would have been the point of buying, say, a 240bhp/2litre engined Boreham-built Ford Escort RS1800 when all I could have done with it would have been to potter out to club events? I couldn’t afford to use such a car on track days, nor foot the bill for tyres and especially engine refreshing costs, so once again I passed on the opportunity. Let me just remind you, though, that in the winter of 1979/1980 Boreham sold off at least a dozen state-of-the-art Escort RS1800s, most of them with winning records, and I could have taken my pick. The deal was offered, but stupidly, I turned it down.
And now we come to the most lamentable lapse of all time. Many people will know that I was always closely involved with the evolution and career of the fabulous mid-engined, four-wheel-drive Group B Ford RS200, and that for four blissful years from 1987 to 1990 I had the joy of running RS200s as day-to-day road cars. At the end of that period, my final road car – chassis no.192, registered F938 MJN and painted Ferrari Rosso red – had completed 48,000 miles. As I was being re-assigned to a new project, Boreham then offered to sell it to me, but because they were talking about a ‘bargain to you, sir’ price of £50,000, I had to plead poverty and took a Scorpio 24V saloon instead.
An RS200 sold for £182,500 last February. Yes, I know, I should have been sectioned repeatedly in this period.