Description
By: Gordon Spice .
Gordon Spice combined his colourful business life with a 23-year professional driving career. After his Mini successes of the sixties and many Capri victories in the seventies, he went on to win an unprecedented four consecutive FIA World Endurance Drivers' titles in the eighties, driving sportscars produced by the engineering company he founded.
In contrast to the austerity of post-war Britain, he recalls a privileged family life in an era of chauffeurs, nannies and gentleman farmers. He describes his rebellious Public School years and his growing awareness of the fairer sex, which led to engagement at 18 and marriage at 21 (not to the same lady!).
In the fifties he became a 'ten pound Porn' and flourished in the then unsophisticated Australian lifestyle, before being repatriated and sent to the USA to learn the family cocoa business. After being fired by his father for fiddling business expenses, he sold encyclopaedias and earned enough to buy his first racing car. After working for Lawrencetune Engines, he went on to work for Downton Engineering at the height of their Mini tuning days. This led to his first paid 'works' drive — something he would have happily done for nothing.
After opening his first shop in the mid- sixties, his innovative ideas led to rapid expansion of his business and he became known in the motor trade as the car accessory king. In the prosperous Thatcher years, after annual sales had reached a profitable £20m, he took his company public on the London Stock Exchange. He describes the highs and lows of chairing a PLC, trying to adapt to the City culture of the eighties, and ultimately failing.
Despite many business commitments, he still found time to compete in over 300 National and International races, including 27 24-hous races, 14 of them at Le Mans. He includes politically incorrect, wickedly witty recollections of the racing scene in Europe, Australia, USA and the Caribbean from the sixties to the eighties.
This is the story of a talented entrepreneur who lived life to the full, and pushed his luck to the limits. Neither success nor failure were ever far away.
