A question I’m asked fairly often is, how do you end up in these situations?
This is often referring to some of the wilder stories I’ve shared around my time with cars, things such as being a passenger in an Aston Vulcan around Donington, and sitting in a backstage trailer with Richard Rawlings, Ewan Thomas, and Harry Redknapp. They are often bizarre, wildly unexpected, and quite pinch yourself tales to tell.
My answer to this question is “we make a lot of our own luck”, a phrase that has an easily misunderstood meaning. I give this answer because its entirely true, every one of my adventures has come about from somewhat stepping into the unknown and seeing what happens, this isn’t to say be foolhardy and wander into danger unwittingly, it’s in the vein of “understand what the risks could be, think about how to manage those risks, and if you can manage them, go for it”.
This idea often requires overcoming a bit of fear, approaching people that may be a little intimidating, and ultimately pushing the limit of my comfort zone. No one has ever been excited to share a story where everything went exactly as expected, it’s always the ones where something wild happened, the near misses, the domino effects, the scary stuff.
My most recent example of this comes from a bit of an accumulation of making my own luck over the last few years, I started Takona with no industry experience, just a love of the automotive and a desire to figure out how to make my passion my livelihood. With that I have had to step towards the unknown a fair few times, and made a lot of friends along the way. It turns out the most interesting part of the car world is the people, and sharing the passion, not necessarily the machines by themselves.
Making friends within the automotive world means that every so often things align quite nicely, on for this particular story, that was the case. I had to head to Bicester Heritage on a Wednesday morning to see a friend about an upcoming project we were working on, as I was explaining this to friends in a group chat one of them mentioned that he was also going to be at Bicester that day photographing the Veloce charity event that was happening on the test track. With that we agreed to meet up for a brief catchup should he have the time, another bonus to my day in itself.
Upon arriving at Bicester I thought it worth popping in to see the lovely people at Classic Performance Engineering who are based on site, yet more automotive friends who have themselves lead to some fun stories. After a brief catchup and mostly fussing their office dogs, I decided to have a wander towards where the event was being held to offer to take a few photos alongside their paid photographers, a chance for a bit of practice and to make some new connections (what often leads to the fun stories).
As I was wandering up the main strip, a beautiful Maserati Bora pulled up alongside me, being driven by yet another friend! James from the Classic Motor Hub had just arrived following some overheating gremlins with the car, and after a brief catchup offered to drive me up to the event, something that negated the awkwardness that can come with approaching strangers and asking to join them as I was arriving with their guest so had common ground to start from.
So the day that had begun as popping down to Bicester to catch up with a friend, had quite quickly turned into photographing some very rare and exciting cars, with some very interesting people behind the wheel, such as Damon Hill, Ross Brawn and the star of my story, Derek Bell.
Having seen that yet another friend (who I’d met a Le Mans this year after he’d driven a GT40 in the classic winners parade and happened to be a friend of someone in our group, small world eh) was driving the Jaegermeister 3.0csl, I headed over to chat about the car and catch up.
It was at this point Mr Bell wandered over to look at the iconic touring car as he’d driven similar back in the day, a lovely opportunity to casually chat with a racing legend without it being pressured at a big event. After some incredible stories from Derek we were interrupted by someone from the event who had come to tell Derek he had left his lights on, but was also needed to drive one of the guests around the test circuit.
I casually offered to turn the lights off for him which he was most grateful for (not that he needed to be, I couldn’t be more excited) and proceeded to hand me the keys to his 924 GTS, a moment that was captured by the photographer of the event, not my friend unfortunately, that would have been too coincidental for the story.
This is how I had 10 minutes mooching around Derek Bells 924 GTS whilst being a last minute guest to the Veloce event, photographing some incredible cars, and going for a brief passenger ride in a Maserati Bora.
All because I’ve been making friends in the industry and agreed to meet up with a friend to go over some details of an upcoming project. To top it all off, my friend called to say he couldn’t make it down so we sorted things over the phone… He was most gutted to have missed out on the morning.
My point still stands, we make a lot of our own luck, sometimes you have to say yes to something that scares you , step into a situation you can’t fully control and go with the flow, or approach someone you’ve never met and find some common ground, cars are often a good way to do all three.
