John (seen here if ‘full flow’ hosting The End of Season Bash !), has owned more than 20 Golf GTIs. His first was a very early Mars red Mk1 1600, complete with 13 inch steel wheels and 4 speed gearbox !. It was registered in the first month of right hand drive importation in July ’79(‘T’ registration) and was bought 10 years later.

One of the first purchases, when he first started to earn a good salary in 1990, was a 2 year old Mk2 Golf GTI 16V Campaign model in Helios Blue (E 566 ABD) – I wonder if that car will turn up in the Championship some time ?!.

He started competing in Golfs with another Mk1 GTI 1600 in road rallying in 1991/2 and enjoyed showing some of the theoretically faster Escort RS2000s the way home. This left hand drive car was only mildly modified and performed really well despite having over 200,000 kilometres on the clock !.

Via several more road cars, including a Mk1 Oettinger 2000E (he wishes he’d kept that one !), he modified another Mk1 GTI 1800, bought at Chelmsford car auctions for £600, to Slick 50 Road Saloons race specification. This car was continuously modified by John over the 1995/6 seasons and went from the back of the grid to leading it’s last race at Mallory Park, before being taken off into the tyres exiting Gerrards !.

A change in job prevented John from racing for a number of years, but John did selected rounds of the Nottingham Sports Car Club Sprint & Hillclimb Championship taking the occasional class win against a very varied assortment of cars in the standard production class. The car used, of course (!), was a Mk2 Golf GTI 8V.

A return to racing came in 2004 with a Porsche 924 in the HSCC 70’s Roadsports. This car, as many will recall, was designed by Audi and is famous for running a ‘breathed on’ VW LT35 van engine !. John breathed on it some more, and took several class wins and 3rd in Class in the 2005 Championship (2 wins lost due to a cracked exhaust manifold, but that’s another story !).

John raced a Class 2 (16V) car in some races of the Mk2 Golf GTI Championship in 2007 & 8 and completed the whole Championship year in 2009. Sometimes close to the front, is this unfinished business ?!.

In 2011 he will race in as many rounds of the V.A.G. Trophy as possible in his Class ‘C’ Mk1 GTI (1900 8V on 45 DCOE Webers).

He currently owns (amongst others) the V.A.G. Trophy Specification Mk1 Golf GTI, a very early (1977 build) Mk1 Golf GTI (with period Oettinger engine !) and his Porsche 924 race car.

As a day job, John works in the Oil Industry and runs his own company offering consultancy services, assisting in the management of large accounts, for clients such as BP Castrol and Q8.