I'm a huge fan of cars! While everyday cars don't really excite me there are so many interesting cars that nobody with any common sense would actually buy but are completely amazing! There's something about a convertible sportscar with a roaring engine that's impossible to beat when blasting through the countryside on a sunny day.

Update: I've actually completed this challenge twice. First with a Porsche Boxster S and second with an AC Cobra...

My first 'proper' sportscar was a Porsche Boxster S. It had a 3.2 litre flat 6 engine which made the most amazing sound over about 4000 rpm. The first time I heard that engine note I knew I would always want a fast sportscar in my life. I kept finding excuses to take it for a spin at lunchtime, choosing supermarkets in other cities to do my shopping and offering to give everyone I knew a lift everywhere. A couple of times I found myself in Oxford in the early hours of the morning for no reason whatsoever.

I test drove a couple of older 911's in the same price bracket when I got the Boxster as I knew I was in for some grief for buying a "hairdresser's car" and a "poor man's Porsche", etc. Stereotypes aside the boxster S is a hell of a car compared to just about anything else on the roads and I actually think it's a better drive than a basic/older 911. I still very nearly caved and got a 911 just because it was a 'proper' Porsche but in retrospect I'm glad I went for the Boxster as it's a fantastic drivers car.

     

     

Unfortunately, after a year - real life got in the way and I had to sell the Porsche. :-(   I needed to stop renting a flat and actually buy somewhere to live and the only way I was getting a decent deposit together was to sell the car (group 20 insurance for a guy in his mid 20's isn't the best way of saving money either!), so the car got turned into bricks and mortar.

In Feb 2011 I had finally saved up enough to have another go at sportscars and get this challenge ticked off my life list again. My first instinct was to go back to Porsche as the last one worked flawlessly everyday in all weathers. I started looking at 911's and Boxsters again but it seemed wrong to get a car so similar to one I'd already owned. Somehow I found myself looking at kit cars, specifically Lotus 7 track cars and AC cobra replicas. I would have loved to have built my own car (and will do at some point as it's on my life list: #71 - build a car) but right now I don't have any space, so the search was on for a prebuilt car.

I settled on an AC cobra replica known as the Pilgrim Sumo. It's powered by a tuned 3.5l Rover v8 engine with an Offenhauser mainfold, big holley carb and quad exhaust pipes and it sounds ABSOLUTELY FANTASTIC!!! I love the sound of an open pipe v8 engine - it does of course make it impossible to subtly go anywhere and leaving early or coming in late is pretty much a communal event! You don't care about things like that though the moment you blip the throttle on a country road or in a tunnel.

     

     

It's amazing how different peoples' attitudes are towards different cars. Travelling around in something like a Porsche or Ferrari you get people cutting you up, and kids in hot hatches nearly killing themselves trying to race you away from traffic lights (usually in a race you weren't even aware you were meant to be part of). Driving the cobra is completely different - it's a constant stream of thumbs up and people driving past with their windows down so they can hear the engine better. A journey of any length will have people hanging out of car windows to take photos using their phones and kids glued to the back window of cars waving. If you do something crazy like stop where other people are (like at a petrol station) it's hard not to draw a crowd. That's especially strange near London where there seems to be an unspoken rule that strangers shouldn't even make eye contact in day to day life, let alone talk to one another, so as a northern lad it's nice to end up in a conversations with well wishers who often have no idea what on earth you're driving but bring a healthy dose of curiosity.