John Turner

I suppose I was about 3 when I started taking an interest in cars, and it followed that, not long after, my interest extended to motor racing. No doubt the ownership of a number of Dinky models and, in particular, an Aston Martin DB3S (in pale blue - not exactly an authentic colour!) helped, along with hearing of the exploits of a certain Stirling Moss, who remains my favourite racing driver to this day.

I never had the wherewithal to indulge in motor racing but in the 1970s, I was able to compete in a number of sprints and hill climbs in what was my only road car at the time, a Reliant Sabre Six GT. This was a rare car even then - only about 70 odd were built - but they had no real value then and I bought this for £310 to replace a rather beaten up TR4. Mine was a very early version with the Les Bellamy inspired ‘flailing arm’ front suspension that had been used on the earlier Sabra/Sabre 4 models. However, unlike those earlier cars, the Six had no steering damper. The risk of ripping off your fingers when you hit a bump was real as the steering kick back was vicious. It was nevertheless great fun to drive and made all the right noises with its straight six 2.6 litre Zodiac/Zephyr engine, albeit fitted with a rather restrictive Zenith down draft carb. The fledgling Reliant Sabre & Scimitar Owners Club was encouraging owners to get out and compete. At one of their club meetings, I purchased a cylinder head with triple SUs. I was still living partly at home then and proceeded to polish the ports and combustion chambers in my bedroom, thanks to tolerant parents. Having fitted the new head and carbs to the car, I went sprinting with the RSSOC.

In those days there were end of season sprints at Silverstone and my first event was there toward the end of 1974. Very sadly the event was marred by the tragic death of well known sprinter and hillclimber, Phil Scragg, when he went backwards into the banking at Stowe at high speed in his V12 E type. In an appalling twist of fate, just a few hours later his son was killed in a road accident whilst driving a Ferrari. I imagine that a family never fully recovers mentally from such a horror. I don’t think that you dwell on such things when you are determined to fulfil a desire to do something, so relatively undeterred, I carried on competing at places like Shelsley Walsh, Gaydon & Barbon Manor from late 1974 through to early 1977 (I think - it’s a long time ago!). In 1975 I was fortunate enough to win the club championship, mainly due to entering, no doubt, more events than my fellow club members. I have so far not found a decent picture of the car on track but below are a couple of pictures of the car in repose and the one above shows it framed between a Scimitar GTE and the late Joe Devlin’s Sabre Six at Barbon Manor. Apologies for rather poor quality pre digital pics.

I’ve now found a couple of photos of my Sabre in action, if ‘action’ is the right word. The first two were taken at Barbon Manor Hillclimb and the bottom one, I think, is probably at Gaydon:-

In the early part of 1977, the old Sabre was pretty tired and when the oil pressure dropped fairly dramatically, I parked it up with the intention of rebuilding her later (haha - sound familiar?). Anyway before that, she had been used to tow her replacement back home from Portsmouth. A Scimitar V6 Coupe with a broken diff or halfshaft - I cannot remember which - and a dodgy Starsky and Hutch paint job, the journey back up the A3/M3 must have been tad scary for my good friend, Ron Berry, who was daft enough to sit and steer the Coupe on the end of a pretty short tow rope, made even shorter when it broke on a roundabout in rush hour Portsmouth. Even at this distance in time, I wouldn’t be prepared to say how quickly this tandem proceeded when the opportunity arose.  Looking back in mellow old age, it was pretty irresponsible and you couldn’t get away with it now, and nor would you want to!

The Scimitar was put back on the road and duly entered for its first sprint at, if I recall correctly, Greenham Common, and the only recollection I have of that meeting was being shouted at to ‘go home’ as I entered the makeshift paddock (that paint job?) and splitting the seam in my trousers and having to wear a long sleeved jumper around my waist to conceal my underpants. I subsequently altered the contentious paint scheme by gently rubbed down the red flash to a point where I could polished it out, and then applied a thin blue coachline to the waistband; apparently far more acceptable.

These sporting activities ended in 1978, as marriage and family beckoned. Our first, born in 1982, Kevin, is now Chief Editor at Autosport but I have no idea how his interest in motor racing could possibly have developed! My other son, Brian, had more sense, and having seen the level of obsession that his brother and Dad displayed in such matters, more or less turned his back on cars!

The thoughts of doing a bit more motorsport hovered in the background though and by the late 80s, I had stripped down the body on my then road car, a Ginetta G15, slightly flared the wheel arches to fit wider wheels/tyres, resprayed it bright red (from blue) and had my standard Imp sport engine rebuilt into a 1040cc performance tuned engine. Partly due to the repositioning of the reg no. plate but not unheard of in these cars, given the under bonnet heat build up, cooling was a bit marginal and I cut a section out of the bonnet for better extraction of the hot air from the front mounted radiator. The car took a bit of sorting since it had the usual flexicoupling wear, not so apparent on the road which I didn’t find out about until its first sprint when I couldn’t change gear quickly, or indeed at all on some changes, and the new tyres I’d fitted were also far too hard. A replaced coupling and a new set of softer road tyres provided a substantial improvement but I only did a few sprints in it for a year or two. The two photos below were taken at Curborough:-