The case of the Cursed MINI

Skip ahead if you must… Here’s the highlights from this episode you might be most interested in and their corresponding time stamps.

• 00:00 Introduction to Gran Touring Motorsports
• 00:22 Meet the Wade Brothers
• 00:51 Early Motorsports Adventures
• 04:08 The Origin of the Latin Lads
• 09:33 John’s Car Collection
• 22:36 Steve’s Journey with Minis
• 28:46 The Bear Incident
• 33:41 Racing at Watkins Glen
• 36:42 High-Speed Mini Adventures
• 37:01 The Talking Car
• 37:32 Power Steering Woes
• 38:27 Black Flags and Fire
• 38:49 Emergency Response
• 41:19 The Aftermath
• 44:28 Another Day at Shenny
• 51:19 Flooded Mini
• 56:09 The Bee Invasion
• 58:22 Planning the Next Mini
• 01:01:54 Advice for New Racers
• 01:11:27 Final Thoughts and Farewell

Crew Chief Brad: [00:00:00] Grand Touring Motorsports started as a social group of car enthusiasts, but we’ve expanded into all sorts of motorsports disciplines, and we want to share our stories with you. Years of racing, wrenching, and motorsports experience brings together a top notch collection of knowledge and information through our podcast, Brake Fix.

Crew Chief Eric: Hey everyone, Crew Chief Eric here, and this week I get the pleasure to introduce you to two of our members. The plucky Brits, the Latin lads, but better known to most of us as brothers, John and Steve Wade. John hails from our Southern states region and Steve from the DMV. We’re really excited to have them on the show tonight and know you’ll really enjoy what comes next.

And with that, welcome to break fix. Gentlemen, so many stories, so many laughs, all revolving around the two of you. So let’s start off with how you got into motorsport and probably explain the whole Latin lads.

John Wade: I can tell you, I can [00:01:00] explain the motorsports bit. Really easily. And Steve will actually tell you the truth.

But the way it all started was because we were bloody broke. So we had to get into repairing cars because we couldn’t afford any sort of pay for it. So, a little story goes along with that. One of my very early experiences with Elder Brother, there’s actually three of us. Les. Yeah. . So Les bought an old Austin, 19 56, 57 Austin, while we lived in England.

Well, this car had a magneto and it was misfiring quite badly. So I’m little, I’m about, I know, 7, 8, 9 years old, something like that. And so Les is trying to figure out why this car is misfiring and what run He close under the bonnet and he, he said, me sit in the driver’s seat. Yeah. Now it’s got a key, like, like an ordinary American car.

So I’m sitting in the driver’s seat. And it’s also, by the way, an automatic, which is very important, because I did not actually run him over, which surprised me. So, I’m sitting in the driver’s seat. Les, all I can see is his buttocks sticking up from underneath the bonnet. And he’s like, Alright, John! [00:02:00] Yeah, I’m alright.

No, turn it over! Cha cha cha! Oh, sod it! Fiddle, fiddle, fiddle, couple of wrenches, some very foul words. Do it again. Chaka chaka chaka chaka chaka naffle. So what he has apparently done, at this point in time, is pulled a spark plug out. You remember this, didn’t you, Steve, eh? Oh yeah, oh yeah. It’s shocking, literally.

So, Les has pulled the spark plug out. Now you and I would ground the spark plug to the block. Well, it doesn’t really matter anyway, because it’s a magnet, isn’t it? So he says, crank it. So I turn the key and all I see is his head up over the hood and out he goes about ten foot on the other side of the car.

What he was doing was hanging onto the spark plug wire, the magneto turn, 20, 000 volt shock right up the elbow. Bang! It shot him about six, seven feet past the car. And he gets up and he goes, that’s alright, that’s working, mate. And that’s how I got started in motors as a littler. Is trying to figure out how to fix the things because [00:03:00] we were completely and utterly broke.

Now, the motorsports bit, brother Steve here, is actually completely to blame for an enormous expense in my life, and I’ll let him tell you how it came about.

Steve Wade: It what? Yep, that’s true. Yeah, I started in motorsports in the States at least in 2000 and something, just doing pro solo and all. That was when I was much younger and I had long hair and it was darker than it is now.

But anyway, John was turning 50 or something like that, I don’t know what age it was. I thought to myself, you know, this Motorsports stuff is quite fun. Uh, my wife and I bought him a Richard Petty race thing at Atlanta Motorsports Park which is his 50th birthday present. So we go down there, him, Carolyn and me and we go to Atlanta Motorsports Park and he’s never done any of this stuff before at least on a track, he’s done other stuff on a track.

So, you know, I get in the car and he gets in the car, he gets in the car, he goes around and around and comes out again, he gets out the car I get in the car, as I’m getting in the car he grabs me by the shoulder, yanks my head back And the top of his head fell [00:04:00] off with a smile that was so broad. I said, that’s it, it’s gonna cost you millions, mate.

You’re in, you’re done, the adrenaline’s going, you’re totally hooked. And that was the beginning of Latin Lads. And I’ll hand it back to John, tell you why we’re called Latin Lads. Oh,

John Wade: Latin Lads, yeah. And by the way, yeah, I still haven’t got rid of the case of permagrin. It doesn’t wash off, by the way. Yeah, but you have got to get rid of the money, that’s for sure.

Yeah, no problem. The wallet’s a lot lighter. I mean, I want to introduce you to my main sponsor, you know, Hip Pocket Racing. I’ve got a backup sponsor, Mr. Card. Those guys have been so good to me ever since I started. Oh, the Latin lads, yeah. So, Steve and I were born fairly close to each other in two neighbouring towns, but we grew up in the same little town called Harlow in Essex.

Well, Harlow has been there since Roman times. It’s a shit hole now, but it was alright back in them days. Uh, you know, we had the old centurions and the spears. We remember that, it’s no problem. One region [00:05:00] of the town itself was called Latinium or Latin. In the middle of what used to be a nice Roman settlement, they built our bloody school, didn’t they?

Well, it’s bad, because it was one of those 60s blocks, you know. All it was, was essentially a rectangular cube, plunked. With holes in it, and you wouldn’t sit down, somebody yapped for a day, and then you left. That was it. So, in this lovely Roman villa, they plunked our school. The school was called Latin Bush.

How about it, yeah? So, the Latin Lads is a bit of alliteration of that part of Roman and British history. So, it goes back, what, about 3, 000 years or so. So, the name’s great. The place is a dog bath. But, you know, the name’s alright. It’s Swiss, isn’t it? Because no sod knows. You know, they go, Oh, Latin Lads, what’s that all about?

Well, Lads in England. Is a, a bit of a, uh, a bit of a sly compliment. A lad is somebody’s a good boy, he’s a good boy, you know, goes for the eyeballs. But, he’s a bit of a miscreant, you know what I mean? He’s always out doing [00:06:00] that. Well, that fits us perfectly well. Now the griffin, mythical beast, ancient Greece I think.

The griffin was the school symbol. And to this day, it’s been, it’s since been turned into office blocks, which is a lot better use of it, because we didn’t get any education out of it. Yeah, yeah,

Steve Wade: not

John Wade: the Griffin, it was the building that turned into office blocks.

Steve Wade: The Griffin’s still there.

John Wade: No, the Griffin’s still there.

So, the class before mine, which was between Steve and I, made about, uh, oh, I would say a 12 foot tall cutout of a Griffin, and put it on the wall as their sort of graduation thing, yeah? It’s still there. That’s where the Griffin came from. And the 3 and 37, uh, Steve’s 37 comes from the, uh, Mini Cooper in the Monte Carlo Rally.

Four years ago now, yeah. The number 3, yeah, is extremely important. There’s no, no question about that one. We all know number three was, right? No, you don’t. Because it’s completely coincidental. So, like most people, after I got hooked, I went out and [00:07:00] jumped in a car, bought a full focus, never regretted anything more in my life.

Anyway, never mind. It all, it runs alright now. Well, it doesn’t run at all at the moment because it’s in about 8, 000 pieces parts, but that’s okay. So, I went and did autocross, yeah? So going on the solo like everybody you go under your first solar you’ve got no clue right? You’ve no idea. What’s going on This car’s all over the place.

This guy’s leaning and going brr rr psssss psssss And things are blllllllll squish you know, so you go to your course walk Sure, I thought I was gonna drive No! Go out and walk it. So you walk around, you’re supposed to memorize the thing. What a load of old cobblers. No way. Right? You go around. What do you see?

Cones! And you go around the corner. What do you see? Cones! More cones. You go down a little straight bit and they say, Oh, this is a Chicago box. Chicago? Not a bad band, but you’re back in the 70s, sonny. No, Chicago box is great. And what do you see in the Chicago box? [00:08:00] Cones! Fleeting more cones. And they said, don’t eat the cones.

Alright, I got it, yeah? Lovely. Memorize, of course, my foot. So they said, all right, go get your number. So I says, anyone do what now? He said, go over there to the trailer. Chat me in there. Cough up some dosh, some pictures of dead presidents. Give that to him, and he’ll give you a number. Ha, fine. So off I go.

You know, how much do I owe you? Believe it or not, it’s still the same today. 35. I said, alright, that’s not bad for a little, you know, it’s about a mile walk. So I’m done for the day, yeah, give him the 35 bucks, I’m off, back in my car, I’ll drive home. And he, he says, you need a number. I suppose, it’s just one on, on the car, like, you know, on the back.

Yeah, it’s got Alabama written on it. And he says, now I’ll give you one. So, he had a stencil cutting machine for cutting magnetic plate. He goes, turns around, comes back, guess what’s in his hand? A number three. That’s how that came about. Pure coincidence.

Crew Chief Eric: I don’t [00:09:00] think anybody has a more thorough or complicated story about the selection of their racing number than you do.

That is by far the most interesting story about the number three.

John Wade: It’s all good, mate. Yeah. That’s how we came to be known as racing. Steve and I were sitting there, um, you know, drinking a fruit beverage based mostly actually on grains, but it’s, we didn’t know. I said, well, what are we going to call ourselves?

And that’s how it all came

Steve Wade: about. That was the only legal one we come up with. There was others you couldn’t really put

Crew Chief Eric: in public, you know, there’s lots of other names. John, when we visited you last year, we saw that you’re also a bit of a car collector and you do a lot of your own, your own work. Was that something that started before you got into motorsport, or did that start as a result of motorsport?

John Wade: Nah, it came about many, many years before that. So I told you the story of, you know, the first attempt at fixing a car and shooting my brother across the car park. So that was it. Well, that was inspiring, that was, because I could shoot [00:10:00] many people across the car park. I’m up for it, you know? No problems. So, as life progressed, we actually immigrated to the States.

And I’d just learned to drive in England, so I had a British driver’s license, came to the States. So now I’ve got to learn to drive in America, yeah? Great. So, eventually, my dad gave me one of his cars. Well, actually, he bought another one. I got this one. It was a 73 blue Chevrolet Impala, right? Everyone’s owned an Impala.

Steve called it the Batmobile. You know, it’s like everyone in here Hey, you

Steve Wade: lived in the damn thing!

John Wade: Oh, yeah, actually, yeah, that’s another story. Completely different subject. Yeah, that’s another story. I lived in it for a long time, but that was an ugly story. That was a good punch up, that one was. So, this car, being built in good Detroit steel, began to rust quite badly.

So, what did I do? Went and got a drill, a bit of metal. And one of the old acetylene torch things in the little cans. And I welded a bit of metal in it, sanded it down, and painted it completely the wrong color, by the way. So I’m like, Ah, that looks great, that darts not, it’s terrible, but it looked good, at least to me, yeah?

I thought that was [00:11:00] fun. I love some of that. So as life progressed, I got to where I wanted to buy an E type, which is, by far and away, the sexiest thing ever to be put on four wheels. Even Enzo says, That’s a nice motor, that. And when Enzo says, That’s a nice motor, you gotta listen to the man. You know, he’s had, he’s had his shot at nice motors.

Completely cocked it up, apparently. But nevermind. So I said, I’m gonna have an e type. To pay my way through college, I was working in a British car shop. Blokes would bring their cars in and I’d completely and utterly cock them up and give them back and take money. Magic, right? I was making a mint and every time I gave it back it was broke.

So they came back. It’s fantastic. It’s a self licking ice cream cone, Eric. It’s beautiful. I was digging this, you know. There was an e type parked in the shop and a bloke came down and this is a terrific story, absolutely true. He came down, his name was John and my boss’s name was Bear. John comes down and he’s got a 73 black e type V12, red connelly leather interior, red stripe tires, wire wheels, good business.

And as he drives in, you know, [00:12:00] I’m tripping over my tongue, my entrails are going around my kneecaps. I’m like, I love some of that. So he brings the thing in and he says, It’s rattling and knocking and it don’t run well. It’s an E Type. Big shock. So, Bear comes and gets me and says, Can you tune that car up?

I’ve got absolutely no idea what I’m doing. Uh, yeah, no problems. No problems. So, he says, Alright, go tune it up. He’s going to give it a valve adjustment. Have you ever tried to adjust V12 E Type? This, by the way, this is going to the car collection. I’m getting there, right? I start, yeah, I pull out the manual.

Bring out the, you know, little tall car. All professional like. I look down at this engine, which is about three quarters of a mile long and about 40 feet wide. It looks like a runway. I’m like, ooh, that’s tricky. And it’s got all these bulges on it, you know. And I’m like, what’s that then? And Bear says, well, that’s the valve covers.

Right, yeah, got it. I’ll have some of that, yank that off, and I’ll tweak the valves. Well, I yank those off, and what’s underneath them? Look in the book, of course, they’re camshafts. Because it’s dual [00:13:00] overhead cam. Not only is it dual overhead cam, there is no lash adjustment. You have to adjust the valves on an E type with shims.

So I go get a box of shims, and I fiddle fart around with this motor for two days, and it’s not bad. Then it’s the carburettor time. Little did I know what awaited me there. None of this SU cobblers, mate. None of this noo, Six twin Webers. Twelve bleeding carburetors. So, I had some experience with tuning silly little English cars with stupid carburetors that are mounted sideways.

So, I had a clue, despite the fact these were not English carburetors. I said, I’ll have a go at that. So, Bear comes out and he’s got this disc in his hand, about that big, with a little tube on it. If you’ve ever seen a Unisin, that’s what it was. And he gave it to me, I went, nice, eh? Right, sounds good. Now, what I want, inside, and we’ve got a link for a rubber tube.

About that long. Stick it in my ear. It’s not, it’s not a word of a lie. And there’s another mechanic that is watching me, like, this bloke’s completely lost his [00:14:00] marbles. Stick the tube in your ear, stick it in the throat of the carburetor, and adjust the carburetor. Then you hear the sissing sound. Shhh. Go to the next one, it goes, psst, adjust it again.

And keep going around, and around, and around, till they all kiss the same amount. Which means they’re taking in the same amount of air. Is

Crew Chief Eric: that why you’re hard of hearing in that ear?

John Wade: Yeah, so eventually we’ll adjust it, and I get this engine purring, yeah? This monstrous engine, and it’s going, Ssssh, tick, tick, tick.

Ssssh, tick, tick, tick. It’s actually driving me bonkers, I got it that, so we called up John, I said, John, You come down and get your mower. So he comes down and he comes down in a rather tasty little car, drives up and he gets out of his little car and he walks over and I said, John, it will tick about once every minute or so.

And he stands there and he says, that’s the best that car has ever run. I said, you know, take it because you’ve got about 20 minutes before it goes out of tune again. So better get on the road, you know, better drive it to the next gas station. Cause it’s got a gas tank about the size of a beer bottle. I look at the little [00:15:00] car he drove up in.

Remember this is 1982. Gas crisis, big engines are out of vogue, and it’s a little British car. And I look at this little British car, I don’t know what that is. And he looked at me and he said, do you? I said, yeah. I said, I’ve seen those before, we’ve seen them in England. I said, they’re pretty rare, aren’t they?

He said, and he kind of grinned, you know, he had this sly grin on his face. He owned an electronic shop. Yeah, they’re very rare. I said, yeah, I don’t think I’ve ever seen one in America. So. Walk around his car, it’s blue, and the other mechanic wants to come up and look in the, where the engine bay is, you know?

And he leans on the fender, and John says, don’t lean on the fender. He goes, oh, sorry, I didn’t want to put fingerprints on it. He says, you’re not gonna put fingerprints on it. You’re gonna bend it. Odd story. So I’m like, what’s all this about, you know? Some arrogant American worried about bending his car with the pressure of a hand.

You know, oh, don’t worry about the mosquito, we’ll just go for the windshield. He says, do you wanna have a go? He said, I’ll take you for a ride. I said, yeah, alright. So out we go, it’s a place called Hanover Street in [00:16:00] Fredericksburg, Virginia. So we go up Hanover Street, and we go down to the local shopping mall, when there was such a thing, before they were all torn down.

And we do the Mall 500, yeah? Go round and round the parking lot, waving at the girls and their little sports car, yeah? We get back to the top of Hanover Street, which slopes downhill, to Bear’s Shop. And he stopped. And he looked over at me and he said, You want to see how this thing goes? And I’m like, yeah, I mean, I’ve been in sports cars all my life.

Since I was a little kid. He mashed the gas in that car and I could not move. The thing burned rubber for an entire city block. And all I’m doing is screaming. I mean, little girls screaming. This car is accelerating. There’s clouds of smoke and there’s snot mouths and camel fur flying every which way. All I can do is grip on this little car.

And so I look at him like, What in the hell is that? So we come back to the shop. And he goes, he says, he says to me, he says, it goes all right, doesn’t it? I said, yeah, it goes all right there. I said, what is under the hood of this car? So he walks around and a little bonnet with two door handles on it. [00:17:00] Like from your shed, and he turns the two door handles from your shed and takes the bonnet off.

Oh, that’s pretty stylish. You know, don’t get a gust of wind, mate. Poof, off she goes. All I can see under that is carburettors. You know what kind of car it was? I thought it was called a Bristol. It wasn’t a Bristol, it was an AC. It was a Cobra 427 Semi Comp. 525 horsepower from the factory. In a car that weighed about 2, 000 pounds.

That was my first experience with rather natty cars. But I like his E Type best. I want to buy one. Well, my finances didn’t, and still don’t, run to buying an E Type. Plus the fact that they’re now a precious artifact and no longer a car. So I said, I know what I’ll do. I’ll build myself one. So I found a company in the Goodwood Motor Racing Circuit, in the old Shell building, which is since gone in the last few years.

But the Super Shell building, which is where they used to paddock the cars, the race cars. There’s a guy called John [00:18:00] Randall, and he was making a car called a Wildcat. The Wildcat’s an sort of E Type replica. It’s really E Type inspired. It’s about four inches longer and four inches wider, if you ordered it like I did, with the much wider fenders, because I’m going to put American wheels, tires, and running gear in the car.

So, when I got the car, it had no mounts. It had a chassis and a body and no mounts of any kind. Nothing. I made all the mounts myself. Built the car myself, it’s still sitting in the garage right now. Although I destroyed the gearbox in it two weeks ago. Completely melted. I melted third gear. You want to try doing that?

It’s tricky. No, don’t. It’s naughty. Completely melted the gear. Except for third. Third worked, right? Ah, yeah, I had a, yeah, it was melted. I had a box full of firsts, really. Uh, it wouldn’t come in, there was no neutrals, just a box full of firsts. Uh, so it’s out of the car at the moment, but that’s alright. Um, so when I finished it, drove it for years, and then a major problem started with the car.

It kept blowing a fuse, yeah? Well, I’d used an old Mustang wiring harness, and what was happening was the [00:19:00] wires were getting wrapped around the steering column, and shorting out, they’d blow the fuse. So I said, right, I’ve had enough of this. I’m going to put a new wiring harness in it. Fine. This is six years ago.

So I said, great, that’ll work. So I’ll buy one of these Ron Francis super duper wiring harnesses for it. Well, to effectively put the wiring harness in, you really will take the engine and gearbox out of the way. Okay. Well, one engine and gearbox is out of the way, we’ll have, we’ll have a different one. So, I added about 200 horsepower, fuel injection, limited slip rear axle, changed all the suspension because I wasn’t overly pleased with it, then I got, uh, Aldean shock absorbers, Fat Man front suspension, polished stainless steel A arms, had the body painted and had a new interior put in it.

So, other than that, I left it alone. It was exactly, exactly stock. So, in the meantime, when I was flying for the army, I decided from a very little kid when I was 10 years old, there’s a place called Bush Fair near Latin Bush, little shopping center in England, got a pub in it called The Painted Lady. You remember that, Steve?

Yeah. In the [00:20:00] parking lot of that pub was the most gorgeous automobile I had ever seen in my life. Flying fenders, long bonnet, little bitty tail, two seats, beautiful car. It was a Morgan. I thought, I’m thrilled. Then I saw on TV a documentary of how they made them. It’s like, I’ve got to have one of them. Got to have one of them.

Little did I know that it would cost the best part of a year’s salary and get three, take three years to buy one. So I said, well, that’s a bit of a problem. So I started looking for a used one. And as it turns out, I got a bonus for being a pilot in the army. So I said, I know what I’m going to do with that.

Yeah. Two years on the internet before I found the car I now own, which was a Morgan Plus 8 with a roller throttle and treated wood. Which is sitting in the garage right now, next to a 65 Mustang Fastback, which is a running driving car, it just, you wouldn’t want to be seen running and driving it. It may be running away from it, perhaps, but not in it.

So it’s purple at the moment, and that’s the next [00:21:00] restoration. Next to that is a 73 VW Super Beetle convertible, which is in an excellent state of rust. Really, what you’ve got here is a VW pile of metal oxide. It’s shaped like a VW, but it really isn’t there. It’s just a myth.

Crew Chief Eric: I believe they call that the, uh, Wolfsburg edition.

John Wade: Yeah, yeah, it might be the Rustberg edition in my case, but yeah, like that. It’s something like that. So next to that are two John Cooper Works Mini Coopers. One’s a Clubman, the other one’s a 17, uh, JCW, and I course, naturally, it’s fairly new, it’s only got 20, 000 miles on it. I could not let that rest, could I?

It’s only got 230 horsepower, I’ve got to have something more than that. So, a couple of calls to Mini Mania, and M7, and in comes, uh, about 1800 bucks worth of bits in boxes, and a little bitty box. That is the secret to that car, right? Because what it is, of course, is a tuna fish. Looks like a fish. Stick your tuna fish in, put your bits [00:22:00] on, go drive.

280 horsepower Mini Cooper S. That thing will flat scream. It is so much fun, and it embarrasses so many people. I absolutely adore that little car. It’s great. And the only reason I ever got into Minis was because of that twit next to me over there.

Crew Chief Eric: So I was actually going to ask, oh, you have a lot of experience turning wrenches.

You’ve also been in magazines for your, your miniatures and your collections and things of that nature. I’ve seen the work you do. It’s very, very good. We don’t have to go, we don’t have to go down that rabbit hole. It’s exceptional. So Steve, do you have the same wrench turning background that John does?

Or how did you get to where you are now with your cars?

Steve Wade: No, no, not at all. I’m just a cheap bastard who won’t let anybody else work on my cars. That is the sum total of it. There’s nothing else to it. Actually, what happened, I have nowhere near that mechanical background at all. It wasn’t until about, let’s see, 2002, when the new Mini came out in the States that I actually got into anything.

I bought a 2002 Mini, which I gave to my son in the [00:23:00] end. Then I bought the 2004 Mini, known as the MC40, and we’ll come on to some of those stories too. And, you know, as I said, I started in autocross and started to mess around with it, and you know, you get all kinds of ads about, well, try to do this, and try to do that to it, so I thought, well, I’ll give it a try.

But, you know, I couldn’t take it to the dealer because I couldn’t afford it. Didn’t want to anyway, didn’t want to mess with my car. So bought some tools, bought some bits, you know, put a pulley on it, put a cold intake on it, that kind of stuff. And it started going faster and faster. And then, you know, John and I went actually to, as I said, on his 50th birthday down to Atlanta.

And then it was it was like, let’s get these cars on the track and let’s do some serious stuff. And that was when I really started pulling wrenches and taking cars apart and reading books and then screwing it off and taking it apart and putting it back together again. And then as, as is, uh, The name of the show, break it, fix it, break it, fix it, right?

Crew Chief Eric: Exactly. That’s it, so. You both have Mini Coopers. Is that just a [00:24:00] inherent patriotic British thing? Or did you have Minis, old school Minis, as we call them here, when you were younger?

John Wade: It’s not very patriotic because it’s German, aren’t they? Well,

Steve Wade: they

Crew Chief Eric: are.

Steve Wade: Well, the new ones are. The new ones are. Actually, I, um, When I first came to the States, you know, because I was English, of course, I was looking for stuff that would be, you know, a little bit of a home style kind of thing, and I actually saw a classic mini for sale in a place called Leesburg, Virginia.

I didn’t actually go get it at that particular point in time, but I thought, you know That would be fun to have an old MINI, because it’s very unusual, you know, it probably gets a lot of attention. So, I actually ended up buying a, uh, 1984 Classic MINI, which I’ve still got out in the garage. 25th anniversary edition, so it’s silver.

And that’s another car that I, I got to work on myself because nobody else can work on or very, very few folks. So, joined a club, you know, Mini, Capital Mini Register, actually was president of that for a while. Tooled around, you know, doing Christmas [00:25:00] shows, all kinds of stuff and exhibitions with that car.

That was before I got into the new Mini at all. And I say, I got a 2004, which was the MC40, and then we put that on the track. Of course, at that point, John had his focus. He was a fooled man at that particular point in time. And was, uh, running his focus all over the place, trying to keep up with his older brother.

Because at that point in time, not only did he not have a car that was as fast as mine, he didn’t have the talent either. I just want to make that clear, you can repeat that, you can put that on a loop, and just put that on the podcast, that there was a time When I had a faster car than him and could drive better than him.

Doesn’t occur anymore, but it did back then. It was fleeting, Jack.

Crew Chief Eric: Fleeting. I want to dive in just to the younger versions of yourselves. Not that you’re, not that you’re that old. Maybe no classic Mini in your portfolio, but was there the other British staple in there? Was there a Cortina or was there a Mondeo or anything like that?

Because the way it’s portrayed to us

John Wade: here

Crew Chief Eric: across the pond is that everybody owned. [00:26:00] A Cortina at some point in their life.

Steve Wade: Well, I it’s not a Cortina story But when I first got in industry in england, uh, it’s very common for part of the benefits in Companies in england, so you get a company car and the first company car I ever had was a 1.

6 full capri And then I got promoted and got a two liter that was special a two liter capri mate And that thing was awesome. I loved that car. So I made it I I was all the way to the top as far as I was concerned. I had a Really neat sports car, you know, it was a

Crew Chief Eric: Ford, but you know, it was what it was. So yeah.

If it’s any consolation, my dad had a Capri. I believe it was a 76 with a 2. 8 liter.

Steve Wade: He must’ve been way up in management. That’s all I can say. It must’ve been. Gave him a track car, mate.

Crew Chief Eric: He told me more than once he spent more time going backwards in that car than forwards because it was very tail happy.

John Wade: The absolute death trap.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, oh yeah. You guys probably saw the end, or quote unquote the end of the grand tour with [00:27:00] our favorite trio, you know, Clarkson, Hammond, and May. Were you guys saddened in the same way that they were with the exodus of the Mondeo or the Cortina? Did you see it go away?

John Wade: It’s like, it’s like saying you’re nostalgic about a pinto, for God’s sake.

No! Yeah, yeah, right. There are certain things Good riddance, that thing was a piece of crap. You know, measles, herpes, cortinas, capris, those things. No, you don’t want that hanging around, mate. I think you want to get that off the road. No,

Steve Wade: they’re

Crew Chief Eric: dangerous.

John Wade: Population control.

Crew Chief Eric: I have to ask, this one is going to be one of my favorite questions for an interview, but since you guys are from England If you could have a beer with any one of the three, Clarkson, Hammond, or May, who would it be?

Steve, you go first.

Steve Wade: Uh, May, I think. One, because he’s got so many other interests. Captain Sloane!

Crew Chief Eric: That’s why! Yeah.

Steve Wade: Well, you know, he likes trains and stuff like that. Builds big Legos and stuff. So he’s really cool. No, [00:28:00] but Captain And I’m about his same pace as well, so yeah, that’s right. I think James may be a lot of fun, he’s a, I think he’s a pretty neat, and not only that, you know, I don’t like people that aren’t too much taller than, so, can’t go with Hammond because I’m like six foot taller than he is, and Clarkson is just an arse, so, you know, he don’t count.

Your turn, John.

John Wade: Uh, it’s got to be the producer that took the blow from Clarkson, I think that’s a bloke I would pick. If anybody’s been to stick his nose in front of Clarkson, mate, you got that. He got him fired. Cool. That’s the bloke I’m on. Yeah. Uh, the hamster’s pretty cool. Why? Because he’s the only one who’s got the balls to stand up to Clarkson.

I love it. He may be short, but he’s wiry me all the time. He’s wiry.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s awesome. Oh man, I’ve got to contain myself. So let’s fast forward a bit. You guys have done some pro solo, you’ve done some autocross, obviously you guys have been competitive, all three brothers competitive, probably since day one. I know you guys are avid time trialers now and I’ve run with you guys [00:29:00] as well, but let’s fast forward to, I somehow got to be both of your instructors.

You did. Yeah.

John Wade: Yeah. And that’s the reason So it’s your bloody fault? Yeah. That’s the reason we’ve had no success since.

Steve Wade: Yeah, so I can’t drive, dammit. Ha ha ha ha ha

John Wade: ha ha ha ha ha ha. So it’s a sod all, not a trophy. Not a bleep. Yeah, I don’t know about that thing. No, actually All the time I thought it was, I had no talent.

And that’s not true. No, well, I mean you could say that, because even Eric couldn’t bring it out of us, could he? Oh, oh, ow. Oh, complete lack of talent. Nothing you do about that. You know, you can teach, you can train, you can mentor, but you can’t fix stupid, can you? That’s it.

Crew Chief Eric: So let’s, let’s talk about the Glen because that was one heck of a weekend for both of you guys.

And I know John, you got a really good story, which really sets up the curse of the mini conversation.

John Wade: Well,

Steve Wade: hold [00:30:00] on. Let me tell a story before we start because I’ll probably fall asleep when he tells that story again. So I’m going to tell you a story that preambles that one. So it’s about a bear and it’s a very important bear.

Does it involve a small blonde child in a bowl of porridge?

John Wade: Yeah, it’s, it’s a bit of a new story, isn’t it, this one, coming up.

Steve Wade: Yeah, that’s it, just steal the punchline, right up the top, just steal the punchline. No, it doesn’t. Anyway, so I’m doing solo cross up in Cumberland, Maryland, you know, and I have a house up there, so I took the mini out, and it wasn’t really that Uh, modified at that point in time.

So it’s just a regular mini. So I take the mini up there and I go up there on a Friday. We run Saturday, Sunday. So I leave the car outside the house and about two o’clock in the morning, I hear this noise outside, scraping noise, really weird noise. So I go down in house, look out the window and there is a bear on the back of my mini, ripping it to pieces.

In one paw, he has got, I think he’s trying to [00:31:00] mate with it. That does come into the story, but anyway. One day he’s got the rear windscreen wiper, because I figured, you know, getting windscreen wipers in the bare world is fairly difficult, so that’s why he took one of those. He rips off the bumper cover of the back, literally rips it off with his teeth.

I’m looking at him wrecking my car. I’m thinking, what the hell am I going to do? So there’s a broom in the house, and I thought, Oh no, I’ll go, you know, hit with a broom. But I’ve heard his stories about poking a bear that you’re not supposed to do. So I didn’t mean that was an idea. So I think to myself, I don’t know, I, I did what any red blooded Anglo-American would do.

I went and woke and woke my wife up. That’s what I did. So I go upstairs and I wake her up. Well, she’s from the mountain. It’s legitimate. It’s not that funny. So anyway, I got upstairs. So I wake her up, I said, there’s a bear eating my car. And she said, and I didn’t think it was funny at the time. She said, well, he’s probably hungry.

Now, if it wasn’t a true story, I would have said that was pretty funny, but I didn’t take it that way. So I said, is there a bear eating my car? I’m not kidding. [00:32:00] So she goes back downstairs with me, goes, looks out the window, and now the bear is not on the back of the car anymore, he’s standing on the side of it with his paws on the roof, shaking the car.

And he’s probably six foot at that point. And I go, what am I going to do? Yeah, he can’t shoot the thing. Well, mainly because he didn’t have a gun, so that didn’t, didn’t help much. But anyway, so She looks at me, she opens the door, sticks her head out and goes, Shoo! And the bear runs away. And, it’s like, wow.

That’s, that’s what you do with a bear. She said, you don’t come from the mountains. Went upstairs and went to bed.

John Wade: I mean, the bear, in the minute, it thought it was trying to get salt out of it. Where’s no bloody salt? Where are the holes in the top? Trying to put it on a windshield

Steve Wade: wiper. But let me tell you why it was trying to get in the car, see, because this is also my wife’s fault. So I, as far as I’m concerned, it was her job to get rid of the damn thing anyway.

So before I came up that day, she says to me, stop by the nursery and pick up some mulch. So I said, sure, you know, you can’t get too much mulch in a mini. So I [00:33:00] go down the, uh, nursery, open the back of the car, the guy throws three bags of mulch in. I get up there. Now let’s park the car. I’ve come to find out it is cocoa shell malt.

That is, it’s the husk of the cocoa bean, which is used to make chocolate. So my buddy Yogi was just trying to get himself some chocolate dessert at the back of my car. That’s all he wanted. That was why he broke into the bloody thing in the

Crew Chief Eric: first place. Fortunately, I think the bear is my spirit animal.

So therefore the connection continues with this cursed mini and wet head and everything else.

Steve Wade: Yeah, and that goes back, that was kind of the first prelude for, Oh my God, this car is definitely cursed. So anyway, fast forward some years later, We’ve gone to Atlanta, we’ve done a few bits and pieces, We’ve thrown some wrenches on it, And John and I

Crew Chief Eric: end up at Watkins Glen.

At the coaches meeting, I was told, Hey, you have two brothers in the mini, And I was thinking to myself, Great. I’ve got two 20 year [00:34:00] olds in a hot rodded, slammed Mini Cooper. What am I in for this weekend? And as I round the corner, and you guys were in a bay not even that far from me, I was, I was very surprised.

I was very taken aback. Two mature gentlemen like yourselves.

John Wade: Yeah, now what you’re trying to say is two fat, 50 ish foreigners. That’s exactly right. In a minute. With an engine the size of a wallet. One of the goals in all this, by the way, of us doing this racing thingy, is, yeah, there’s the thrill of the racing, but also the fact that we get to go on places that very few people get to go in the world, and places that we’d heard about in England, and you can pick up your bottle of beverage and tell stories that nobody believes.

It’s awesome. So we go to some of the most famous tracks in the world, and that’s part of what we do. We have what’s called a treat track every year, and we pick one track that’s world famous and go [00:35:00] there. We’ve been to Indy and Daytona and the little Talladega bit, Watkins Glen, all over the place. So the Glenn was in a special challenge

Crew Chief Eric: and we got to share in some of that enthusiasm with you last year because for a lot of us the cannonball run is very similar and so and coming to barber last year was part of that bucket list of going to a world famous track again Thank you for hosting us.

That was an incredible weekend, but yeah,

John Wade: it’s It’s bucket list and it buckets down. It’s Alabama, four o’clock in the evening.

Crew Chief Eric: That

Steve Wade: did bloody rain. It did rain that night. No good way to end it. So

John Wade: the glitch, you know, for us especially, because a lot of British drivers drove there in the Formula One, back in Formula One days, Formula Two, the Formula Three days.

People that we idolize, people like Graham Hill and Stirling Moss have driven that track. So there we are walking through the town and there are paving stones in the town with the names of our heroes. Who have eaten in the restaurants we go into and have driven on the track that we’re going to go drive on.

So this is like reverence to us, yeah? Reverence be damned. Let’s go [00:36:00] fast. So we get on this world famous fast track in a car that most cars on the track would outrun in second. But it’s alright, we’re going as fast as we can, yeah? So we get in the car and we’re trading stories. What about this corner? What about that one?

Can’t get up the S since Every time we get up the S since people are passing us left and right. Diabolical. Point bias left and right. cannot figure it out. So Steve and I said to each other, we need to get someone to show us how to do this. And that was you. And what we were doing was changing out a third coming into turn two to go up the S’s.

And you said, don’t do that. Leave it in fourth. Which, of course, Steve and I are both like, Kya! Cobblers. No way. Yes way. And, of course, we got up the hill much faster. And we started to develop quite a bit of speed. Got that little mini up to about 137 miles an hour on that back straight. Going into the bus stop.

Which, in a mini, is trucking right along. Little car was going pretty well. Fortunately, it’s got pretty decent brakes because I’d have killed myself five times if it didn’t. I’m going around, yeah. After you left us, and I’m on me [00:37:00] own. Having a lot of fun. Well, Steve and I are firm believers in the fact that cars talk to you.

Crew Chief Brad: They do.

John Wade: They do. Especially Dominic cars like this one. It’s like Damien, you know, this thing. And it was talking to us very, very gently by dropping its entrails onto the ground in the shed. So it’s dripping steadily. It’s a British car. Not only do we expect it, if it’s not dripping, it’s empty, yeah? So what happened?

Well, look underneath. What’s that, Steve? Steve looks like a dial, mate. I think that’s power steering fluid. Ah, no big deal. Like, these little cars, front wheel drive cars, when you’re hammering the steering around, have a tendency to boil the fluid. Pukes out all over the place. Nothing but a thing. Yeah, it’s back on the track.

No problems on the track We go sort of around a couple of laps come down boom on the main straight the pitch straight and then coming up turn two Steering gets a little bit stiff right before I’m starting to turn in. Like, ah, [00:38:00] no, power steering’s gone, yeah? All the fluid’s pissed out. No big deal. So I’m like, I’m gonna, I ain’t gonna stop.

I’m not going in the bloody pits. I’m gonna complete this lap, Sonny. I paid for this. And around I go. And it’s, it’s not that bad. It doesn’t weigh that much, right? So it’s like, ah, sod it. And the faster you go, the better it is anyway. So put your foot on the pedal. You’ll be alright. Well, by this time, there’s sort of concerned looks.

of people around the track. But that’s all right. So we go through the bus stop, down five, up through seven, and all of a sudden, I see black flags. I’m like, oh, no! I’m trying to get into the pits and get this thing fixed, will ya? Black flags, big black flags. So I’m sort of coasting to a halt. Black flag pointed.

Stop! Okay, red flag. Okay, so I pull over onto the grass, and I’m sitting there with a little car idling, you know, and behind me comes a GT Mustang, and he’s blowing his horn, and I’m [00:39:00] like, yeah, yeah, nice Mini, yeah, it goes well, doesn’t it? Lovely little car. I wonder what’s going on. Somebody’s obviously hit the wall in 8 or 9 up ahead of us.

So about that time I hear the sirens, and there’s the lights. And up comes the emergency vehicles to go up and rescue this prat who just bashed the wall. So as I’m looking, you know, you can’t turn very far. The emergency vehicles, there’s a fire engine, an ambulance, a rescue car, jaws alive. There’s like four helicopters flying.

So, screech! Next to me. What’s the matter, officer? The speedometer’s broke, you know, I was just guessing. And a cab gets out, and he comes running over to the car. And I’m sort of like, Oh, nice. Yeah. It’s a nice little mullet. Why don’t you go rescue the prattler himself up there? And he leans in the window and he goes, Get out!

I’m like, oh no, I wasn’t going that fast, officer. He goes, Get out! Now! What? So I’m starting to undo the belt, you know, the little buckle thing, you know, making sure I’m smelling good. And he [00:40:00] says, You’re on fire! I’m like, Eh! Boom! Out the door I jump. Sure enough, there’s smoke billowing out the back of the car.

So I’m like, Okay! And another guy runs out the fire engine, Comes round the front of the car, And he says, Where’s the hood latch? I have no clue! It’s Steve’s car! I don’t know where it is! It, um, it’s There in the car because I’ve suddenly figured out it’s probably on the wrong side, isn’t it? The hood latch is on the passenger side in this little mower.

So I’m slowly figuring this out whilst about that time Some little chap about that tall grabs me by the shoulders spins me around and pins me up against the ambulance I’m like, whoa, whoa, whoa. What’s up? And he goes, okay The hood latch and he pins me back in and he goes how many fingers have I got? I’m hoping ten but There’s four in front of me.

And he says, How many there are? I said three. He goes, You alright? And I’m [00:41:00] like, Well, yeah. What’s the problem? By this time they figured out how to open the hood of the Mini and there are flames. Not much. Flames shooting out the engine. It’s bad because the fire should be inside the engine. You know, the outside flames now.

Not a good thing. So, he says, you gotta come with me. I’m like, okay. So he bundles me into the ambulance. So, car, yeah, car, not, not mine. Not my car, right there. Uh, you need to get that. So the guys come around and they gently pick up this little motor to put it on the back of the tow truck. Yeah, to get it up on the flatbed.

Because it’s so low and so little, it wouldn’t actually get over the ramp. So all these guys cluster around the front and they pick it up. And they march it up on the back of the flatbed, put it down. So I get in the ambulance, and they’re doing the So this guy comes up, he goes You, get off me! Is that you?

You alright? How are you? He’s giving me oxygen! Why am I getting oxygen? I’m perfectly alright! And so he’s, then he’s doing things with little [00:42:00] discs sticking over here and stuff and sticking his fingers up under my neck. He’s like, you alright mate? Yeah, I’m fine. He says, alright, I think you’re alright.

Yeah, I’ve been trying to tell you that for about the past ten minutes, never mind. But don’t worry about the freaking car that’s burning to the ground over there, you take care of me. So off we go back to the paddock. Into the paddock we go, and here’s Steve. Well apparently there’d been a radio call that my wife and Steve had heard while I’m out there.

Number 37 on fire. So we get the car, get it off the back of the flatbed, put it up on jack stands, and it’s melting. The bottom of the cars, all the wires are melting, it’s nasty. I’m thinking we’ll put it back on the track. Steve’s like, nah, probably not. About that time, up comes a corner marshal who goes over to Steve.

He says, is that your car? He says, yeah. He said, uh, we saw you out there. And he goes, no, it’s actually my brother. So he comes over to me, he says, were you driving that car? I said, yeah. He said, I’m the corner marshal from turn two. I remember I stopped at turn seven, which is, I don’t know, about 150 miles away.

And he says, when you went past me, flames were shooting [00:43:00] out from under the car, both sides and in the rear. No way! He’s like, yeah. He said, we tried to stop you all the way to turn seven and you just ignored everybody. I was racing, mate. I don’t want to stop, do I? As it turns out, it was probably a really, really smart thing to do.

Just by coincidence, because as the fluid drained out, caught fire, the wind, because I was going so fast, blew the flames out, the fluid puked on the ground, and then I got arrested and thrown into jail. Yeah, so not a bad day at Watkins Glen, all in all, you know, so that was about the third time that thing went home on a trailer.

Steve Wade: It’s very fortunate that you played. John didn’t get hurt or anything, and none of his clothes got hurt or anything. Especially his fire suit, which was actually sitting on the chair in the garage and not on his back. His fire suit was very safe. Not a

John Wade: mark on that fire suit, lovely.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s very good. Yeah.

John Wade: Yeah.

Crew Chief Eric: So Steve, that was the first fire and the second plague. We had the bear attack, our first Inferno, followed by the second [00:44:00] Inferno.

Steve Wade: Yeah. See, like I said, I’m a cheap sod. So what happens when I got it back home again, I decided that. You know, I can fix it, no big deal. So I’d, you know, put the car up, get underneath it, take the power steering out, because it’s electric anyway, take all the hoses out, everything, just take it all apart.

You know, throw all that crap away, buy a whole bunch of new stuff, put it back in again, put some more power steering fluid in it. Start it up. Works fine. No problem. It’s running peachy king. So I go, okay, fine. When’s the next event? Next event is at Shenny. So I drove it to Shenny. I didn’t tell it. Drove it to Shenny.

Everything was perfectly fine. We’re running on Shenny. And Eric, I do believe you were there that time too, weren’t you? You actually were, right? You! You! I’m telling you, yeah. He even looks like a bear now you come to look at it. Yeah, he’s a bear! Yeah, he’s a bear suit he was in that day. I tell you, anyway, so, we’re at, we’re at Chenny, right?

So I’m driving the Mini around Chenny. And I’m going, doing the same thing, you know, going as fast as I can through all the corners, slowing everybody else, but still [00:45:00] going as fast as I can go. And there’s somebody going, Toot toot! Beep beep beep beep! Around the tracks. Well, what the hell’s that supposed to mean?

I have no idea. So I’m coming down the straightaway, you know, doing that U turn, coming back in again, and all of a sudden, the, uh, steering gets really stiff. I went, I’ve heard this friggin story before. So I know what’s the matter with this. The power steering’s pissed out all over again. As you come over the hill at Shenandoah, through that U turn, you now can just go straight into the pit.

So I just went, okay, fine, you know, hand out the window, went straight, let it run down the hill, into the middle of the paddock, stop the car, and it Instantly fills with smoke. Instantly. I mean, it’s like, just like that. It fills with smoke. So I thought, well, I probably, I’d better get out. Don’t need any advice.

Not like my brother. Don’t need anybody coming up and talking to you. Just get the fuck out of the car. So I undo everything, jump out the car. And the problem was there was probably 50 people who now wanted to help me. with fire extinguishers, and there are fire extinguishers and shit everywhere. There’s smoke from the car.

There’s white [00:46:00] powder all over the place. I’m standing next to it. So I’m trying to tell people it’s all right. Don’t worry about it. It’s not a before I can fix it. It’s no big deal. And then someone opens, opens the hood and the chimney effect happens. And now somebody said to me, I don’t know. It was, have you turned it off?

And I said, of course I’ve turned it off. But, I didn’t know this at the time, I was lying. Because it was still on, which meant the fuel pump was on. So every time somebody went up with a fire extinguisher, they put a fire out, then the fuel would come back up again. And I did like four or five times, I went, let me take the key out.

So I took the key out, and uh, that was, that, that, that time. Even I couldn’t fix it. There was hardly anything left, any plastic left under that, that at all. Your

Crew Chief Eric: reenactment of Chernobyl was quite authentic.

John Wade: Oh, it was a

Crew Chief Eric: meltdown.

Steve Wade: It was,

Crew Chief Eric: yeah, there was crap everywhere. It was clouds of stuff all over the place.

So what you didn’t know, as we saw you coming in with the smoke coming out from underneath the car, I had yelled to the, to the crew, Steve’s on fire, grab your fire extinguisher, [00:47:00] and so we, as you stopped, we were running towards you, and I remember yelling at you in the car, You’re on fire! You’re on fire!

And you’re like, what? Like, get out! And at that point, we just unloaded the fire extinguishers all over the

John Wade: car. You said it wrong. What you should have said was, you’re on fire again.

By the way, you know, in the world of races, stuff like this happens, you know, cars blow up, bits come off, gearboxes drop out the bottom, that sort of thing. But in the world of civilians, this is not a common occurrence, yeah? So we had our niece Miranda there, Carolyn and I’s niece, actually Carolyn’s niece was there.

And she saw this whole event. By the way, I’m on the track behind him. And come around the corner to this great column of smoke coming out of the pit. Going, that’s not good. No, that’s my brother. It’s like, oh well, he’ll fix it. Nah, I got, I got another ten minutes on this session. I’m rocking baby. So, Miranda [00:48:00] apparently comes up to the car with Carolyn.

And she turns to Carolyn and says, Is it normal for flames to be coming out from underneath the car? She had no clue that

Crew Chief Eric: this was not a normal occurrence, even for us. After that, we loaded your car up on my trailer, and I took you home, began the process of finding a replacement.

Steve Wade: Yep, that’s exactly what happened, yep.

Because this time, even with all the wrenches and the cheap shit, so I’ve got some stuff I do, so we get it back to my house, I put it in the, uh, in the courtyard, and, you know, I get underneath it, and they’re All it was, was the block, and everything else was gone. All the plastic’s gone, everything’s gone, so I could see how it was, I was in Nope, even I can’t fix this one.

And by the way, the reason it did it, was because I changed out everything I said on the power steering fluid and all that kind of stuff. But the rack for the steering, which is right by the power steering pump, surprisingly enough, I didn’t change the seal. And apparently when you put seals under pressure after they’ve been on fire, they leak.

Ask me how I know.

John Wade: Now wait a minute. Wait, I’ve got to call cobblers on this. I know exactly what happened here. It [00:49:00] was sod all to do with seals, although it was a contributing factor. What happened? You know that little funny little curve called the carousel? The carousel’s got an ankle biter in it, doesn’t it?

It’s about 45

Crew Chief Eric: degrees, yeah.

John Wade: Yeah, so there’s a ridge. And if you put two wheels on the right side of that ridge And two wheels on the left side of the ridge, the middle of the car hits the ridge. What is there in a mini? Power steering cooler. Power steering

Steve Wade: pump.

John Wade: Bye bye now, bye, didn’t need you anyway. See ya.

Now little does he know, little did we know at that time, that many years later we would spend a hell of a lot of time, effort and money doing exactly what he did. tearing everything we can off the car, leave just the block and the metal, and go race. Yep, yep, do it again. It was the carbon

Steve Wade: effect. So, moving on to the next part of this pestilence story, was in fact, again, at Shandy, but this time on Main, right?

So, as we were saying there, the car was pretty much wrecked, so I ripped out of it what I could take, which was the, [00:50:00] um, seats and, you know, sway bars and crap like that, and went and bought another one. Well, actually, John got and found the one down in, Huntsville way. So we find this Mini, actually it was in Nashville, wasn’t it John?

Yeah, it was in Nashville. So we find this Mini, look just like the Mini that we set on fire twice and you know, had been broken into by a bear and all those kinds of things. Except it wasn’t an MC40, it wasn’t a commemorative edition. But anyway, so we buy that one, so I go down and get it. Drive it back, then we take all the crap out of it, or most of it.

Take the seats out, all that kind of good stuff. Get it ready for the track, so, no problem. Get back in it again. This time I checked the power steering pump. Actually, I left it alone, which was probably a good idea. It was apparently ruining a touchstone scrap. So anyway, so I, we, uh, take it to Shenny. As you know, Friday night we get there.

John’s there with his trailer and his Focus. He gets the Focus off. I park the Mini beside it. We’re up at the front end on Main, there, where the paddock is. And everything’s good. All good. No problem. We go back to the hotel, have a couple of beers, and, uh, apparently the heavens opened. [00:51:00] In fact, I think it was the second coming of the apocalypse that night, because it hammered down.

I mean, one storm. Yeah, that’s right. Yep, yep. There was all kinds of stuff. Noah was staying in the room next to mine in the hotel. He hadn’t got his boat ready at that time, but he was definitely there. Apparently it rained that night, and it rained where we were. So the next morning we go back to Maine and there’s a sign right by the cars that says subject to flooding.

Well no shit. At that point in time there must have been 400 million gallons of water all around all the car. My car, again, my car is up to the wheels in water. It’s full of water. The engine, the battery is dead as a dodo because it’s been underwater for about two hours. So I’m looking at it and Eric, I think it was you that came up and said.

Is that your car, Steve? And I said, yes, it is, because we didn’t know how to get ahold of you. And I’ll tell you a story. Every time I go somewhere in this [00:52:00] region at this point in time, someone comes up to me and says, is that your red Mini? And I go, yep. They go, well, we couldn’t get ahold of you. Well, why don’t you just throw the fucking thing out?

What difference does it make? You know,

Crew Chief Eric: nevermind. So there’s a little extra piece to that story, because I happened to drive to Summit Point, Maine that night to meet up with some other people that were there in the paddock. And I saw your car. park there. And as I drove around, it had just started to open up.

It was very difficult to see. And I’m in the, I’m in the station wagon, which is very low car and all that. I actually got beached in the middle of the paddock and it flooded out and it killed like everything. It locked up the serpentine belt and all this kind of stuff. So I’m sitting there and pouring down rain and mountain man, Dan, who.

As the listeners know has been on several other episodes at this point comes and basically yanks me out of the, out of this giant puddle that I trapped myself in. So we’re underneath of the, the canopies there and waiting for stop raining. And so I was trying, I was still trying to figure out why my car wasn’t running.

So soaking wet at this point, I’m underneath the car. We [00:53:00] basically ripped the shroud out from underneath cause it had jammed itself into the serpentine belt. keeping the car from wanting to start because it was locking up the peripherals. Got all that figured out, again, because we knew it was, the water was starting to rise, so I took the long way around as we were leaving, following in Dan’s wake, because he’s kind of breaking, breaking the flood with his truck.

I wasn’t the only one to say this, because the Crutchfields were there too, we actually saw your car lift, and the back end was floating, and the only thing keeping it in place was the motor. Because

John Wade: it wasn’t in the same parking spot we left it.

Crew Chief Eric: Correct. Because it’s floating when we left and all of us looked at each other.

We’re like, I don’t know how to get all the Steve. This is going to be ugly. But we also need to figure out how to get out of here.

John Wade: You don’t

Steve Wade: want to

John Wade: get

Steve Wade: older, Steve.

Crew Chief Eric: Don’t

Steve Wade: tell him whatever you did and nothing he can do. So that’s why Noah didn’t have his boat because he was using my bloody car. So yeah, next, next morning we get there

Crew Chief Eric: and it’s full of water and it’s shit everywhere.

Where the flasher still on because that [00:54:00] was the funniest part as the car was floating the hazard lights were just

Steve Wade: The battery was dead Yeah, there was dead fish all over the place because it all been electrocuted but the battery I said it was

Crew Chief Eric: so after the great So that that ruined your weekend. Let’s let’s say that

Steve Wade: Yeah.

Well, it’s not John’s, I should point out. John’s like, well, so do you. I’m taking the Focus out. That’s running fine. My Focus

John Wade: was in the trailer, completely dry.

Steve Wade: Yeah, that was lucky.

John Wade: Yeah, the flood, right. I mean, so why am I worried about his motor? I mean, I’ve got track time to get. That’s great.

Steve Wade: That’s what privately loves you for.

John Wade: Absolutely. I mean, I love So, as the time’s gone by, little tribute to that little car, time’s gone by, Steve is, um, distressed to some degree about this situation. So, he starts pulling things out of the car and he’s using all sorts of language I haven’t heard since I was a very small child. It’s Walter Gush.

He opens the doors, and Walter Gush is out of the car.

Steve Wade: Yeah, sorry. Yeah.

John Wade: His feet were wet. So, [00:55:00] I’m like, that’s a bit annoying. So, he’s pulling out stuff, and then he decides And he, by the way, he’s putting it in everybody’s way, but he’s just ripping stuff. He’s getting, pulling carpet out of carpet, soaking wet.

And he gets in, and I look at him, and I go, What do you want to do, Steve? You know, what are you going to do with a mower? He said, I don’t know. I said, put the key in it. He says, go on, I said, put the key in it. So, he puts the key in it. We charge the battery, he turns the key, and it starts! No! It shot three foot columns of water out of his head!

It looked like two bloody bushes, all the water got in it, and he drove it. God, that thing would not give up.

Crew Chief Eric: But that wasn’t the fucking plague either. There’s another one after that that involves Yeah,

John Wade: yeah, yeah, yeah, he ain’t done yet.

Steve Wade: Yeah,

Crew Chief Eric: no,

Steve Wade: he ain’t done yet. So, uh, but this one’s kind of, kind of the cause.

I’ll bring the car home and, you know, soak him wet. And by the way, there is a, um, mark on the side of the car. HWM, high water mark. And it is about 15 and a half inches off the ground. It is, it, it, there was a lot of water.[00:56:00]

So anyway, so about a week later, I’m sitting in the house here, and my wife comes down, she goes, come upstairs, come upstairs, come upstairs, come and see. So you know, I said, okay, fine. So I go upstairs, go into the front of the house there, just above where the car is, and there is a swarm of bees that you cannot see through.

It is, you know, I don’t know, about 20 feet across, about 10 feet high. Just bees. Thousands and thousands of bees. I mean, that’s it. You know, the apocalypse. The world is coming to an end. We’re done. That’s all three now. I’ve had fire, flood, and now pestilence. And they went into, at the eaves of our house, the queen did, and they made a nest in our house.

That was the, uh, that’s all the trifecta of the, uh, pestilences. Okay, so that car is biblical. It’s absolutely

Crew Chief Eric: biblical. There’s no good ways about it. So after sacrificing a lamb over the hood of it, Or the bonnet, rather.

John Wade: Dripping blood on the roof, yeah.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, has that seemed to calm the demonic powers of the mini, or is there something more to [00:57:00] this story?

Steve Wade: Yep, yep, let me, let me show you a picture because I think you’ll enjoy this, this particular picture. No, it’s not funny. Hold on a minute. Just bear with me. Talk amongst yourself for a little bit. And for the listeners,

Crew Chief Eric: and for the listeners, we’ll post this on the, uh, the show notes, so.

John Wade: Yeah, you see where those tires are?

Yeah? Steve, tell them what was where those tires are now.

Steve Wade: A jersey wall was there seconds before that because on Sunday at Dominion, I wrecked it. And you can’t quite see it there, but yeah, I hit that tire wall, hit the tire wall, tire wall hit the jersey wall, the jersey wall got Pushed about six foot down the hill and tipped over that I am afraid is pretty much the end of that poor car

John Wade: looking for another

Steve Wade: Really

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah, I don’t think your next car should be a mini at all.

Steve Wade: I think you’re right I’m, i’m thinking something much more, uh, you know apocalyptic, you know, maybe a [00:58:00] firebird perhaps or something like that, you know a triumph Dodge beeman

Crew Chief Eric: Yes, you gotta

Crew Chief Brad: embrace, you embrace the demon.

Crew Chief Eric: Maybe it’s, maybe it’s the color, like you need to get away from the red. You know, something more subtle like black.

You know, that’s not a demonic color in any way. So, you know,

John Wade: just

Crew Chief Eric: gotta change the pace, right? But actually this is a good segment, planning your third generation of minis, right? Is it really at the top of the list or are you considering something different?

Steve Wade: Why I’m looking at minis is because I’ve got so many spare parts now.

I might as well just put it all back together again. I got seats, I got roll bars, I got superchargers, I’ve got gear boxes. I’ve got so many bits and pieces that if I don’t get another mini, that stuff’s all just useless. That’s why I’m going for minis first. That stuff will sell on

Crew Chief Brad: racing junk.

Steve Wade: Yeah, that may be what happens, I don’t know yet, but we’ll see.

That’s what he dropped on

John Wade: the

Steve Wade: thread,

John Wade: racing junk.

Crew Chief Eric: I’ll pose the [00:59:00] question this way, if If you didn’t have to worry about what it cost and you just wanted to buy a track car, start from scratch, get rid of the minis, gut reaction, what would it be?

Steve Wade: I think, you know, running maybe a Spec Miata or something like that would be a lot of fun. It’s easy to work on, it’s a blast, they’re little small cars, so, you know, that could be fun, I think.

Mate, he’s old! Ah, he’s a glutton. He’s a glutton for punishment. Exactly. Only if money’s no object, I don’t care if I bring it up, right? And apparently I don’t care if I bring it up anyway. You

John Wade: just buy a box of Miatas.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s what you do, right? I thought he was going to go, oh, I’m going to buy a 911 or something.

Just something totally off the wall, like money’s no object. So, let’s phrase it that way. If money was no object, top three cars in your three car garage, what would they be?

Steve Wade: E Type will be the first, without a doubt. That is the most beautiful car ever made. So, I’d definitely start with one of those. I think the McLaren MP2 is a hell of a car, too.

I think that would be fun. We [01:00:00] can park that next to it. Not too close, because we don’t want a mating or anything. So, that would be a good second car, I think. And then the third one, I don’t know. It’d have to be a classic of some kind. Some old, I don’t know. A full Capri would be kind of cool, wouldn’t it?

Maybe a Cortina. I thought you were gonna say a Hillman

John Wade: Imp. Oh yeah!

Steve Wade: Eric, Eric, the first car I ever personally owned, I told you the Capri was the least. The first car I ever owned was a Hillman Imp. God bless you. It got, it got 465 miles to the gallon. He’s taken it to the

John Wade: next level, doesn’t he? I mean, that’s where it’s gone.

Crew Chief Eric: This, this torch goes back many, many years, apparently. Yeah, oh yeah. So, John, if you had to add three bays to your existing garage, what would you put in there?

John Wade: I would. Uh, actually, there’s actually going to be several consistent drawers. So, and some of them already own, so it’s alright. So, any type, no doubt, right?

A Morgan Plus 8, already got one of those. The next one would be a four and a half [01:01:00] litre blown 1929 Bentley. from the Le Mans car. I mean, that is absolutely the epitome of a driver’s car. I mean, chain, drive, gears that you actually have to move, handbrake over there, you know, got timing on the steering wheel.

Yeah. What a mower and sound. Oh my God. There’s nothing that sounds like that mower. I think if you went, yeah, John, you got to come into like sort of nearly the 21st century. I think I’d have to tell you an Audi R8. Which is an absolutely fair. Yeah,

Steve Wade: yeah, that’s a good car.

John Wade: And then if I just had enough room a McLaren

Steve Wade: 720s.

Oh yeah, good, good choice, yeah. I want his, I want his cars next to the ones I chose. They’re good cars. You just borrow his or just? Nah, he’s selfish. He wouldn’t let me drive him. He’s terrible that way.

John Wade: I’m not lending him shit. I wouldn’t lend him a car. He’ll

Crew Chief Eric: come back burnt. So let me flip back for a second.

If now, with all of your guys experience, all these years wrench turning and competing and [01:02:00] the laughs and everything that goes along with it and the curses as well, what advice would you give somebody that’s just now starting out in this discipline? Don’t! Don’t do

John Wade: it! Now, first things first, mate. Go get yourself, from some source, a wheelbarrow load of money.

Where you need to start. The best way to make a small fortune in motorsports, as we all know. It’s the start of a big one.

Steve Wade: First thing I would do is say, go learn how to drive. Don’t even worry about your car. Just go learn how to drive. Just go to some schools. Start off, you know, figuring out what happens when you get a car going fast and you get momentum changes and all that kind of good stuff.

Because that will hold you throughout your racing career, whatever it turns out to be. The car will fly. You’ll get good cars. You’ll drive faster cars. You’ll do better and better. But if you don’t get the nut behind the wheel nice and tight, you’ll be forever chasing yourself.

John Wade: The thing you can chase fastest, the cheapest, that will make you go the [01:03:00] fastest is you.

I will tell you this bit of advice. Get a good crew chief and I’ll tell you why. No unsupervised racing ever. When I hit the wall at Barber, I was on my own. When Brother Steve hit the wall at Dominion, he’s on his own. Ever go out on your own. Never do that. Have adult supervision for our childish behavior.

Crew Chief Eric: That is sage advice, if there ever was one. So I a hundred percent agree when we are all together, you know, as a larger group, that’s part of, you know, we talked about that in episode two, where we come to each other’s rescue, it’s the premise of break fix. I mean, it’s not the, the whole theme of what we talk about here.

And obviously we don’t want to portray racing as a big crash fest. I mean, things happen, they’re mechanical. Failures to your point earlier, the race cars, and even the track prepared cars, because there are very different full on race cars versus track prepared cars. They’re under such extreme stresses that you would never encounter the engineering failures that we [01:04:00] encounter on the street.

So I don’t want to dissuade anybody from trying it. You know, we we’ve tried our best in the previous episode to talk about what it’s like your first time out and to advocate for people to try it with the cars. They have, I don’t want them to run away scared, but there’s life lessons to be learned here.

The harder you push, like in any sport, if you were a runner, a marathon runner, if you’re a football player, there’s always the risk of injury. There’s always the risk of something going wrong. The harder you push and the more you reach for that trophy or reach for that goal. So, you know, that’s, it’s very sage advice at the end of the day.

John Wade: Well, I’ll tell you, Eric, you know, it’s a lot different. Getting hit dead smack in the face by a 300 pound linebacker than it is letting your piece of metal hit the wall for you.

Crew Chief Eric: This is very true. I feel much more at ease, you know, hitting something than getting hit by something. I’ll put it that way.

John Wade: Yeah, don’t get in the motivation to lose weight. It don’t work.

Crew Chief Eric: Another valid point.

John Wade: For me personally. The goal of getting in the [01:05:00] car was improvement. Now, I don’t really yet know what that means. And I’m deadly serious there. There isn’t an end to that, right? Because success is a journey, not a destination. Every time, every lap, every track, you learn something. And you challenge yourself harder and harder and harder.

And you get more and more dissatisfied with yourself. And then when you hit that good lap, that one good one out of the 57 that sucked. Is well worth the effort it is in and of itself its own reward And especially if you’re not racing high dollar staffing, we don’t obviously you’re not that worried if you bend it I mean other than you know, if you get hurt, so that isn’t a worry on your mind You’re not worried about a bunch of snapper heads and grandmas going the other way while you’re trying to avoid a pothole Your same way same day with like minded people who are trying to improve and learn and compete against each other.

And that is, in and of itself, its own reward. The one thing that sharpens you the most is competition. It doesn’t matter what level that is, whether it’s solo, [01:06:00] TT, road race, it doesn’t really matter. You’re gonna get better because you want to. You have to have that desire to get better. And you run across people in this sport, in this little amateur game that we play, some of whom are really pretty damn good at this.

And you can learn from them and try and go get them and there’s no greater reward, ask me how I know, than finally catching up that one guy who’s been a pain in your side ever since you’ve been doing this and watching him stick his little finger out the window. Your heart rate goes up, you puff up with pride, you know, you can hear yourself screaming on the recording at the end of the day.

To me, there’s no illusion. that we’re ever going to be pro racing drivers or even particularly good ones, but we’re going to be the best we can and get the most fun out of little cars as we possibly can while we’ve got the time and money to do it. And so it builds its own reward and you get more and more competitive, faster, more and [01:07:00] more desire to go a little faster.

The trouble is, where do you draw the line? Because, how fast do you want to go? How much money you got? I got 10 miles an hour if you got 10, 000 and so on and so on. So you just eventually have to set the bar, and realize what your expectations are for yourself. What your expectations are for the particular vehicle that you’re driving and then try and maximize and optimize everything you can within the box you just built.

If you can do that, you can walk away proud of yourself if you were 15th or first because you maximized what tools you had in your hand at that time to include yourself. And that’s, I think, one of the greatest rewards of motorsports of all.

Crew Chief Eric: I cannot agree more. That is, that is very well put.

Steve Wade: Advice for people getting into this, and then we’ve already said it, I think.

Yeah, it’s great for the mechanical side of it, right? And there’s a lot of cerebral effort into what it takes to get a car to run fast, and how you handle it, [01:08:00] and the driving techniques, and all that kind of good stuff. So there’s a lot of physical skill to it, as well as you can drive. You know, if you like working on cars, it’s a lot of fun doing that kind of stuff.

Actually,

John Wade: about GTM and I mean, no criticism to the guys down here, but when I’ve raced up with you guys, it’s a couple of things. Don’t be afraid to ask for help, for advice, for a wrench, for a beer. It doesn’t matter. Interact with those people and build a support group. Build a group of people who go racing with you, even if they’re not always there.

You know, so you’ve always got that with you. Like I said, whether they’re physically there or not, you know, it might be you’re gonna call up, Do you know somebody who’s got a serpentine belt for a 0 4 Mini? All of a sudden there’s a support group and one arrives at your doorstep. Just a thousand things.

If you isolate yourself, and like a lot of the guys who do autocross, just go, race, go. And they isolate themselves, you miss two thirds of the experience of actually going there. I think, you know, it’s great going [01:09:00] out on the track, great going fast, great, you know, setting fire to things and smashing walls.

That’s all good. But the best thing, I think, that I get out of it is one, spending time with my brother because we live so far apart. That’s awesome. And then, the evenings. Are generally just great. You swap stories, you tell bullshit, you drink beer, you have fun, you unwind. With a group of like minded people.

Whether they like you or not, at least they’re gonna hang out with you, you know? Ha ha ha

Crew Chief Eric: ha! As, as Brad says, you know, Friends are the family you choose. And it’s a very poignant theme within our organization. And, you know, it’s We’ve been very fortunate to pick up members like yourselves. You guys are great.

I mean, I always look forward to talking to you and hanging out. I know this year has been really tough for everybody with, with the pandemic and everything that’s going on. Tracks didn’t reopen until recently. We’ve had to postpone a bunch of our events. The cannonball is really still up in the air. We just now released.

The information about summer bash, you know, things of that nature. And it’s just been [01:10:00] tough. And you know, this is a great way for us to get together, but it’s not the same to your point is everybody getting together at the event and doing what they’re doing. And what’s really funny is maybe if you have telepathic powers, unlike the demonic powers of the mini, it was my way to kind of put us in top gear and talk about your experiences with the club.

And I know you’re a lot newer than some of the other members that we’ve interviewed, but I think you did a good way of kind of driving into that.

John Wade: Well, you’ve got to remember, Steve is the COVID 19 of the race track. We spend months and months until the rally opens up, and he shuts it down immediately.

First time.

Steve Wade: Yeah, that’s right. But the camaraderie of the groups is really the big value. John said it himself, you know, he and I have spent more time together as brothers in the last 15 years racing than we’d ever done. For the previous 15 years, and that’s just two brothers, right? Then there’s you guys, you know, we’ve met you, met the rest of the GTM group, every track you go to, someone knows you, or you know them, and they come up and, you know, they help you, you help them, you [01:11:00] bullshit for a little while.

One time on Shanny, there was one of the guys running a mini there and he over tightened his lug nuts and stripped them and sent his wheel into the woods. So they, um, towed his mini off and John and I basically jacked it up, fixed it, bought him a new wheel on and

John Wade: he went running again. By the way, I think it’s a bad thing to give yourself a point by.

I’m just saying.

Crew Chief Eric: All right, on that, gentlemen, I cannot thank you enough for spending all this time with us. I’m sure the people on the other end listening to this are going to be laughing their heads off. It’s always a great time with the Latin lads, with both the Wade brothers, incredible stories, and I can’t wait to see what the next plague is with the next red mini in the

John Wade: series.

And Meteorite.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah.

John Wade: One comedy is one. Greatest racing driver of all time. Eric, go. Santa. Steve.

Steve Wade: Sterling Moss.

John Wade: Ken Miles, sonny. Hey. Oh, that’s

Steve Wade: a good

Crew Chief Eric: choice. Yeah. Yeah. But on that note, it’s [01:12:00] time to end. Thank you guys.

John Wade: Thanks a lot.

Crew Chief Eric: See ya, Eric. See you at the track. See ya. Thanks, Brad. Yeah, take care, Brad.

John Wade: Take care, Brad.

Crew Chief Brad: If you like what you heard and want to learn more about GTM, be sure to check us out at www. gtmotorsports. org. You can also find us on Instagram at grandtouringmotorsports. Also, if you want to get involved or have suggestions for future shows, you can call or text us at 202 630 1770 or send us an email at crewchief at gtmotorsports.

org. We’d love to hear from you.

Crew Chief Eric: Hey listeners, Crew Chief Eric here. Do you like what you’ve seen, heard and read from GTM? Great. So do we, and we have a lot of fun doing it, but please remember we’re fueled by volunteers and remain a no annual fee organization, but we still need help to keep the momentum going.

So that we can continue to record, write, edit, and broadcast all of your favorite content. So be sure to visit www. patreon. com forward slash gtmotorsports or [01:13:00] visit our website and click in the top right corner on the support and donate to learn how you can help.