Growing up in the 1960s in the family's wholesale fruit and veg business, Mike Marchant’s enthusiasm for anything mechanical started in his school days when he was able to explain the workings of an engine to his classmates, drawing the explanation on the blackboard as he talked them through it. After leaving school in 1966, he did spend three months as a trainee mechanic at Manfields, a Vauxhall dealership in his home town of Brighton, but with a strong influence from his father, he was destined to go into the family business.
That had its compensations because the wholesale market his dad worked at was a 2.5 acre site with granite-topped paving, making it an ideal off-road practice ground where Mike got his first taste of driving. He knew that if he volunteered to wash his dad's Mk2 Jaguar, after a quick wash and rinse he could then drive it around the empty market. He was also allowed to move the lorries and other vehicles on the site. With such a keen enthusiasm for driving, he soon earned the nickname of 'cab happy' from the other market traders because if anything needed moving, they knew Mike would be only too pleased to jump in and do it.
When his sixteenth birthday came around, Mike's parents had
