[woodcote]

One of my favourite cars of my youth - so a perfect opportunity to dig it out of the Woodcote Racing Museum...

   

I think my love of driving big, tail-happy saloons came from the Rover. Towards the end of my first Scalextric obsession, we (family and friends) did some Rally Cross events and the Rover was my car - up against Porsches, Minis and Escorts. I made the Rally Cross start straight, where we covered the hashed rectangles with 3-in-1 oil to give a slippy first half of a lap, with traction coming back about half-way. Each driver ran three heats of three and a half laps - with a grand final for the two most successful cars in the heats. I seem to remember particularly ungentlemanly driving in the Rally Cross races... I found some track plans and 'rules' in with some of my old cars and track - the two Rally Cross circuits were Brands Hatch and Aintree, both dating to when I was 14.

Of course, we soon discovered that once the oil soaked into the tyres and dried, we were left with some ultra-grippy tyres. That led to a final summer of sensational Indy Car oval racing and then I had a break for twenty years.