CHRIS GOFFEY
We stop by for a chat with the legendary motoring journalist, programme maker and longest serving presenter of Top Gear
How does it feel to have made a living out of doing something that you love?
‘I don’t think I ever planned it. My wife Linda goes mad at me for not planning enough and doing things off the cuff, but it just sort of… happened. One moment I’m working on a local newspaper and the next, I’m being driven around Silverstone by Juan Manuel Fangio. That happened around 1973 at a foreign car test day at the circuit with former Autocar editor Peter Garnier. Fangio was a guest of Mercedes, who’d given him the keys to a 450SEL 6.9. We hopped aboard, with me in the back and Peter sat in the passenger seat beside the F1 champion. Having wafted halfway around a track full of fellow ‘motor noters’ who were in an assortment of new cars, Fangio must have become bored because suddenly, he floored it. The car squatted down, the nose came up and in a shriek of rubber, I was in the back bouncing around everywhere. Fangio was casually chatting as we went sliding from corner to corner. We got back to the pits with the brakes on fire.’
How did your career begin?
‘In 1972, I was a journalist on the Evening Mail when I was assigned the task of reporting from the scene of the Staines air disaster. A Trident crashed shortly after take-off from Heathrow, killing all 118 people on board and soon after, I found myself sitting on the garden wall of the home belonging to the pilot who’d died. I’d been told to go to the house, knock on the door and get an interview with his widow, but there was no way she’d talk to any of us vultures hanging around outside. I realised that kind of work really wasn’t for me, so when I happened upon an ad vacancy for News Editor of Autocar in the UK Press Gazette, I went for it. Despite being a long-haired 20-something at the time, I got the job!’
Were you already into cars?
‘As a child, I would visit my aunt at her flat beside the Great North Road, where I’d sit for hours identifying the passing cars. I knew all the makes and models from an early age. I recall being around seven or eight when my dad, a flight lieutenant in the RAF, came home in a lovely old MG
SA. It was a magnificent looking car – a Thirties tourer made by coachbuilder Charlesworth, so great big headlamps and spare wheel in the running board, that sort of thing. Dad blew the engine up on the Stevenage bypass and always told people he gave up smoking to pay for the required engine repairs.’
You first hit the road in a Citroën, didn’t you?
‘I certainly did! Although not the one in my driveway today, sadly. This 1948 Normale belongs to Traction Owners Club member Jonathan Howard (who has stopped by to visit Chris at home in Oxfordshire). My first car was a Citroën Light Fifteen. Unlike Jonathan’s example however, I found mine advertised for fifty quid in the local paper. It was a total wreck – you could see the road through the floor. It used to fill up with smoke as you drove along watching the tarmac whooshing by underneath.
One day, while driving from Wembley to visit my parents in Cornwall, it consumed its entire sump of oil and went bang on the A30. My father was deeply unimpressed when he saw it. We dropped the sump, took the con-rod out and ran it on three cylinders to the local breakers who gave us a tenner for it. To get home, I proposed a plan to buy an Allard P1 which I’d spotted for sale nearby at a little garage in St Mawgan. I begged dad to lend me the £100 but he said no, and I ended up on the train home instead.’
What replaced the Citroën?
‘I bought a Mini Cooper – a 997cc version with a bucket seat. It needed work though. One rainy day, I was stopped by a motorcycle policeman because I was leaving four lines behind me the road - it was crabbing so badly. He told me to get the subframe fixed and let me go on my way. Another time, after being flashed and tailgated near Henley by a guy in a Cortina 1600E, I put my foot down. Unfortunately, it proved too much for the poor Mini. A piston disintegrated on the downstroke, which went out through the back
of the gearbox and left a large stream of oil and metal over the 1600E. It went all over his vinyl roof. He wasn’t very happy at all.’
Was your next purchase more sensible?
‘Well, no. A former colleague and great friend, Tony Bastable, proved to be a bad influence. We were flicking through a copy of Motorsport magazine in the pub and spotted an Aston Martin DB2 advertised for £500 in Feltham. By then, Tony was presenting Magpie on television and doing quite well. He insisted he’d lend me the money, so off we went to view it. However, we were gazumped, and I somehow ended up with a Lotus Elite instead. By that time, my career had begun to take a new turn and I was occasionally writing road tests for the local papers. They weren’t so easy to get, though. Manufacturers were quite reluctant to give the Staines and Egham News reporter a test car!’
Presumably, that all changed when you joined Autocar…
‘We had a Hillman Imp at home, but after starting as News Editor in 1972, I got given a long succession of test cars – the first being a yellow Citroën GS. I recall my first task was to assist the late great Jeff Daniels on the high-speed circuit at the MIRA test facility. I sat beside him with a stopwatch in a Toyota Custom crown estate as he wrestled with the wheel at 105mph. We then did an acceleration test on a Saab 99, tyres squealing and smoke everywhere. No doubt that car survived for a bit longer, but the exotic stuff such
‘As a child, I’d sit for hours naming the cars driving past on the A1’
as Lamborghinis and Ferraris often didn’t. A puff of smoke and bang – there’d be no drive at all, so a difficult phone call would have to be made.’
When did the TV opportunity present itself?
‘I was at Autocar until 1977, which is when I got the editorship of Motor Trader. Leading up to that time, I had been doing a few pieces to camera on a BBC evening news show. Then one day, while flying home from the launch of a new Mazda in Japan, I found myself on the plane beside Jim Pople, who was the producer of Thames Television motoring programme Drive-in. He asked me to do a report on the Japanese automotive revolution and it was afterwards the TV work really took off. In 1981, the editor of Top Gear approached me while on a press trip and asked if I fancied joining the team and soon after, there I was... working alongside William Woollard and Sue Baker.
There was a break in the mid-eighties, when I established a production company and presented The Motor Show and Wheel Tracks for Channel Four, but I was later invited back to Top Gear.
I remained there until 2000, when I broke my neck. Linda and I have always owned and enjoyed riding horses, but unfortunately I came off one of them and I ended up with a neck stabilising 'halo' screwed to my skull for a time.’
Speaking of injuries, didn't you once crash a Maestro?
‘Yes, that story has become slightly apocryphal. I was on the Austin Maestro launch in southern Spain. We had a lunch stop at Ronda and the route back was down a mountain road. Fellow journalist Jeremy Walton was driving another Maestro in front and, while taking the road at some speed, I unfortunately skidded on some diesel oil. The car slammed into the side of the mountain, did a ‘wall of death’ for a while and ended up sliding down the road on its roof. As I dangled upside down in my seatbelt, the voice synthesizer announced ‘low oil pressure’. Austin Rover lost three other new cars on that launch, as I recall. Something similar happened the previous year with a Sierra but we won't talk about that!’
Have you gone electric yet?
‘Well, I tested the Enfield Electric when it came out. I was on the M4 and it ran out of juice. Not even the hazard warning lights worked. A few years later I tried a Sinclair C5 and wasn’t too impressed with that either. Electric cars are terribly good these days – smooth and fast etc – but I think questions remain about how batteries are produced. I do hope we’ll see continued developments in hydrogen technology. For now, I’m very happy with my Subaru Forrester Turbo. It’s old, but it goes like stink!’ ■