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We were delighted to host Andrew and friends from Petrolicious at Tuthill Porsche HQ after the recent Goodwood Revival. The group spent an enjoyable morning here, exploring the workshops and learning more about our origins and what really drives our activities.
The story of the Petrolicious visit is now online and is worth your attention. Regular readers will be familiar with Francis’ early days, but for those who may not know where our business began, this is an excellent read.
“Dad was a farmer and went to Australia to get a job,” Richard tells us, “but when he arrived there was a drought, so he couldn’t find work on a farm and wound up getting a job at a Volkswagen dealership instead. That was the start of his car thing. Being a good farm boy, he could fix just about anything, so he got up to speed pretty quickly wrenching on VWs.
“During his younger years, he spent a lot of time driving across the Middle East, for one reason or another, which is where his passion for adventure, safari, rallying, touring, whatever you want to call it – that’s where it began. So, later in life he wrote to Volkswagen, after having witnessed the London-Sydney Marathon Rally, saying he wanted to do the 1977 London-Sydney Marathon Rally in a Beetle. Volkswagen gave him a sort of manual as to how to prepare a Beetle, he prepared it, and off he went to run it in the event.”
Our London to Sydney story has been told many times – it was a superb adventure. Francis’ subsequent marathon events included taking a Saab V4 to the original Safari Rally, along with the entire family. Experiences such as this and driving home-built Beetle rally cars in WRC and also driving for many manufacturer teams in rallies all over the world encouraged Richard’s sense of adventure: the pure excitement that only cars can deliver. This experience underpins all of our exploits: whether that is racing, or rallying, or building uniquely engaging road cars.
We hope you enjoy the Petrolicious feature and look forward to welcoming the team here again one day in the future. Perhaps we can even convince them to bring a video crew to our Below Zero Ice Driving school up in Sweden, where every day is epic! Learn more about that adventure at belowzeroicedriving.com.
