For this competition I focused on the small, and local aspect...
That said - let me tell you a little story… in the late 90’s, whilst still at school I started a part-time job in a small independent HiFi shop. In the early 00’s business was going well, the internet had opened new opportunities and help with market awareness, but hadn’t yet decimated margins or torpedoed high street retail. With a surplus of profits the boss man decided to revisit a passion he had as a young man, racing.
It was decided that once the lease was up on his RX-8, we’d take it racing. The series chosen was the Britcar endurance championship. Still very much a grass-roots championship offering ease of access in production classes, but gaining notoriety through an appearance on Top Gear, it seemed like a good choice. Also, the flagship Dunlop 24 hours of Silverstone was an event I very much enjoyed spectating at before it was absorbed into the Creventic 24h series (and eventually died).
Once the RX-8 was available, it was sent to a local motorsport garage run by a mechanic that was looking after my own BMW 635CSi at the time. The owner had some experience with racing, and had been chosen to run a couple of RX-8’s in the Britcar 24 at about the same time. The car was kept very close to production spec, and didn’t take long to prepare.
In terms of livery, though there was no real sponsorship, we opted to advertise the brands we sold as a shop. We were able to use the coverage to negotiate some favourable deals on a few orders for shop stock, but no money really changed hands. We raided the point-of-sale cupboard for stickers and vinyls, and set about liverying up the car. A couple of the sales reps provided stickers too, though the only company that helped out financially was Meridian, so we spent that money on a Carbon Fibre wing and put their logo on it. The wheels were provided by a customer that was keen to get involved, even the local sandwich shop got in on the act by catering for us over the race weekend, so they got a sticker too!
Come the 24hr race the following year, we were ready to take the green flag… and the rest as they say, is history.
The most interesting part of this story is that it’s mostly made up!
I did work in Hifi shop (for 17 years), the boss did have an RX-8 and did enjoy tuning up his cars when he was young. All the brands on the car are those that we sold. Guglielmi motorsport did do most of the work on my 635CSi barn find, and Steve did run RX-8’s for Mazda in the Britcar 24 - which is obviously a real event and was on Top Gear - and I did love going to watch it. Everything else is made up, though the girls at the sandwich shop round the corner did make a good stotty.
though i did have to slap on some real world motorsporyt sponsors as well how else would I be able to do any racing? and a custom number display to complete the package
I don't get how the technology moved away from the perfection of touch capacitive screens like the Nintendo DS but there we go
