TVR Tuscan and British GT title winner Michael Caine is always on the lookout for a good deal. The motor trader – “I’m just a second-hand car dealer from Newmarket,” he quips – is a man with a nose for a bargain.
But even he couldn’t have dreamt that, when he set his heart on buying a Ford Sierra RS500, he would unearth a piece of motorsport history. It was a pipe dream he’d held since he was a teenager, and when he was in a position to make it happen, he got way more than he bargained for.
The 52-year-old always had a hankering for the Blue Oval’s sporting products, and it started when his working life began.
Michael explains: “My first job was as a trainee car salesman at a place called Gilbert Rice in Cambridge, which was the official RS dealer for the area. I was there when I was 17, which was prime time for the RS500.
“The car in the showroom that we loved, and the one that all the public wanted to come along and look at, was the Cosworth. Because we were an RS dealership, we would get tickets to watch the British Touring Car Championship – they were sent through by Andy Rouse Engineering. The top salesmen used to win tickets and I would buy them off the guys for a fiver or a tenner because they couldn’t be bothered to go.”
NUMBER ONE
Michael continues, “The car for me was
