Circuit Razor

My philosophy with cars is they should be driven hard and thoroughly enjoyed. If you want something beautiful to look at then buy art and hang it on the wall. Hence we're at Goodwood on a freezing morning doing shakedown testing.
I've been fortunate in that I've owned the Razoredge on these pages for almost 20 years and I've been able to trace the history of the car from new: it was imported into New Zealand on February 12 1965 by one John Mander. After John's untimely death in late 1968, his wife couldn't bear to drive the car so it was sold and for the next five years it passed through a succession of owners before being purchased in 1973 by the previous owners, George Walker and his sister Katherine. Other than repainting the car in its original colours in 1976, which it still wears today, nothing changed on the car until I bought it in 1990 as my first car, after George had got too old to climb in and out of the low-slung seats. By then it had covered about 67,000 miles. I added the personalised registration plates it wears today, lowered it and then just drove it, competing in national rallies and slalom events, doing 1,000-mile holidays with countless drives over the mountain roads of NZ. It went into storage in 1996 with 84,000 hard miles on the clock.
Fast-forward to 2005 when I shipped the car to England and it became obvious serious mechanical work was required. The brakes were largely ineffectual, second gear was knackered and the engine oil pressure virtually non-existent. So the choice was fairly stark: restore to original spec or tinker. Knowing there are plenty of people hell-bent on bringing back to perfection as many original Type 34s as possible, I decided to modify the car, but only in a way that I could've done had I owned the car in the early '70s.