Iain often told me (everytime he... um... 'road tested' my car ) that his favourite rally car was Murray Coote's 1200 coupe, from the good old days of Group G. He preffered it when it had the 1900-odd cc L18 which really screamed. He said it was definitely faster when they went to the 2.4 grunter, but it just wasn't the same...

Iain is a real enthusiast, and really loved working on competition cars. When we fitted the Stewart Wilkins L18 to my car at the start of last year, we took it to a dyno to see if it still had what it should after 3 years of competition. It actually made another 10bhp (same dyno) in my car thanks to the better custom extracters I had (and probably the more efficient driveline compared to the 1600 it came out of), but the mixtures had leaned out a bit because of the better breathing. A quick call to Iain, expecting to book it in the following week, but as soon as he heard the kind of power it was putting out, he dropped everything straight away and left his shop with a box full of jets and stuff to come over and play with it at the dyno - I think he just wanted to drive it again! He got us another 5bhp and couldn't wipe the smile off his face when he came back from his 'road test'. He didn't even charge us, and spent well over an hour there tuning and chatting. Top Bloke