Restoring Juey
You were involved with the closed auction of JUE 477. How did you come to be responsible for the restoration project on behalf of INEOS?
The previous owners originally wanted a public auction to try maximise the profit, but at the same time they wanted to ensure it went to the right owner. As you mentioned, it was a closed auction; we found a buyer, Sir Jim Ratcliffe of INEOS, and after it sold he asked me what I would do with it? I was adamant that it whatever they did, it had to be done the right way.
When it came out of the woodwork and was displayed on a trailer at the Series I rally in 1998, loads of people claimed that they had inspected and seen it there. They knew the chassis and engine numbers but no one had any axle, gearbox and transfer box numbers. They also did not have any of the finer details; they knew what was missing but what exactly was there?
When we got hold of #001 for the closed auction I spent hours and hours on, under and in it, there was all this stuff that no one else had ever seen. This included the fuse box, date tags on the radiator, gearbox number, transfer box number, freewheel device number and axle numbers. At that Series I rally people had briefly seen it, walked away and wrote it off as something that could not be brought back to life. That really surprised me.
Lying under it in
