Mark Walton celebrates 25 years, not out
Please get out the party poppers and hang up the saggy bunting, because this month represents a milestone in my career: it’s 25 years since I first became a car journalist. Part of me is absolutely delighted that I’ve managed to scam my way for a quarter century; part of me is horrified that I’m now so old.
My first job was on a now-defunct magazine called Performance Car, once a sister title to CAR. I bought a copy in 1993 and came across a small notice in the news pages: ‘Do you want to be a road tester?’ With no requirements for experience or qualifications, the job ad was a free-for-all for every crackpot, fantasist and dreamer in the country, including me. The magazine received hundreds of applications, from schoolkids, students, bored airline pilots and dentists. It took them months to sort through the CVs, but – miraculously – I got an interview at the magazine’s editorial oces in Peterborough. I still have the letter.
It wasn’t a conventional interview. After a brief, friendly chat with the editor Paul Clark and road test editor John Barker, I was taken out to a nearby country road in a Honda Prelude 2.0 VTEC. John got in the passenger seat and I got in the driver’s seat, the idea being I would drive us back to the oce while John scrutinised my skills (or lack o©) like an amoeba in a Petri dish. That road turned out to be the legendary B660, ‘the ‘Nordschleife of Cambridgeshire’. Legendary to readers of Performance Car at least, because we did virtually every photo shoot there.
Anyways, the thing I remember about that drive back was the moment I was barrelling along, convinced I could see the road sweeping straight up the valley ahead of me… until I suddenly realised the road ahead was actually a farm track, and the actual road – the actual road that I was actually supposed to be driving along without actually killing the two of us – swerved hard left between the hedges about 15 metres ahead. Ha ha, just a little rookie error! Idiot. Thankfully, without giving away my alarm, I slammed on the brakes, teetered the Prelude through the corner by a whisker and then took off again as if it was all intentional. In my mind, I like to picture John nodding his head with approval at my late braking, while I invisibly cross myself like a Catholic priest in a horror film.
Amazingly I got the job, and in March 1994 I left the PR agency in Edinburgh where I was writing press releases for Kwik Fit and moved to Peterborough. My first day in the oce, I went out with photographer Mike Baillie to do my first car shoot, with a Ford Probe. Remember that? The hilariously crass attempt at a phallic Capri-wannabe? Still, I didn’t mind – I couldn’t believe I was getting paid to drive someone else’s car round in circles.
Performance Car, April 1994 – there I am, in a Ford Probe, looking about 16. I tell myself the last 25 years have gone in a flash – that it feels like just five minutes since I embarked on my new life in magazines; but one look back on Performance Car, April 1994, and I realise it was a lifetime ago. The First Drives section includes the Audi RS2 and original Renault Laguna; the Formula 1 season preview features Ayrton Senna joining Williams; and the cover story pits an old-school Aston Vantage against the then-new Ferrari 456 GT (which looks like it’s riding on 15-inch trolley wheels). No traction control, no CO2 emissions, no speed cameras: 1994 was like the Wild West.
Of course, I didn’t get to drive the Audi, Aston or Ferrari that first month. Not even the Laguna. I had to wait until the next issue, May ’94, before I had my first copy published. I wrote short first drives for a Vauxhall Corsa 1.4 Flair and a Mitsubishi Shogun. Whoo hoo! But then I can’t complain – that same month I got to drive my first ever Ferrari – two in fact, a 308 GT4 and a monstrous, side-straked 512TR. Mindblowing. I also had my first crash, in a Honda NSX… though that particular milestone I might gloss over, if that’s okay with you.