As they say in America, Peter is a real car nut. Always has been. So it takes no more than a tank of petrol and a map to keep him happy.

He regularly competes on most of the well-known classic rallies, including Rallye Monte-Carlo Historique, Liege-Istanbul-Liege, The Marathon, The Winter Trial and the infamous Lands End to John o’ Groats.

In between rallies Peter joins in with whatever sporting event might be on, it could just as likely be a race meeting, hill climb or even enjoying a relaxed beer or two at a pub gathering of the VSCC.

Driving any car that comes to hand, both old and new, he is not afraid to give an opinion. But we can live with that. Luckily, as he travels the world he always has his camera packed and sometimes even remembers to send pictures back home to the magazine.

Peter Collins takes photographs, lots of them. And Retro-Speed is a lucky recipient of his ever expanding collection of motor sport action.

As with most of us the bug struck early and in Peter’s case, being a Londoner it was visits to Brands Hatch that left the biggest impression. Youthful enthusiasm with an old Kodak grew into a professional career and in particular a love for powerful Italian cars. Today he travels the world and has written three authoritative books on the subject.

He is a shy, retiring man and teetotal, preferring a good cup of tea to champagne.  When not interviewing the good and the great he likes nothing better than to relax with his fellow bell-ringers at his local church.  At least, that’s what he tells us!

Ken Davies’ enthusiasm for motor sport was ignited by Paddy Hopkirk’s emphatic win on the 1964 Monte Carlo Rally and as soon as he’d secured his driving licence, he rocked up at the local motor club to serve a tough and open-ended competition apprenticeship in almost every discipline of the sport, driving a wide variety of cars.

He has raced and rallied to international level and also held the role of team manager, official and media correspondent, making his reporting debut at the 1976 British Grand Prix.

Ken is a modest man but we know better; Welsh Sports and Saloon Car Champion 1993, and as well as managing the team he also drove in the winning 6-car team at the Birkett Six-Hour Relay Race in 2006 and second place in 2009.

Roman attended his first motor race around 1972, aged just six, and was immediately hooked. From that instant his dream was to become a racing driver, never missing any of the rare race reports on German TV and cutting out every newspaper snippet he could find to glue into his note books. Fortunately, receiving Austrian TV, he was able to watch Heinz Pruller reporting on all the Grand Prix races. He saw his first live Formula One race in Zeltweg, briefly meeting his hero Elio de Angelis.

Roman’s own racing career began in 1988 in a FF 1600 Lola, but he soon realised he was lacking all the important components to succeed, except enthusiasm. He remained in FF for years just “to be on the same strip of tarmac for a while” with future stars like Michael Schumacher, Jorg Muller, Michael Krumm, Takuma Sato, Robert Lechner and Romain Grosjean.

In 2002 Roman started to write about the races, and journalism became his main link to his beloved sport after he stopped racing in 2008, selling his trusty Vector 1800. Since then Roman has been contributing articles and pictures to many specialist magazines and websites in Germany, China, USA, Czech Republic, Poland and Italy. He has published five books on motor sport history, his main motivation being his ambition to meet all his heroes from the sixties and seventies.

Stuart trained as a commercial artist, spending many years within the global graphic design industry. More recently he’s had the time to develop his two passions (after family he reminds us), motorsport and photography.

A brief foray into competitive driving was in a Cooper S on the Motoring News night rallies during the 1970s, but he believes time has proven he’d best stick to photography. In fact, cameras have been part of his life from the beginning, his father being a professional photographer, who took Stuart to his first race meeting in the mid-sixties. He never told his children he used to bunk off school on a Wednesday and hitch to Brands Hatch to watch the likes of Stewart, Hill, etc. practicing!

During the seventies he was always at Brands and it was during this time that Stuart got totally hooked on the big hairy sports cars, the tops for him, the Lola T70s. Forty-five years on he says he feels very lucky being able to photograph these and all the other evocative cars from that and earlier periods.

Typically, 2006 was an interesting year for Retro-Speed’s Chief Tester. He received his bus pass, underwent a double cataract operation, yet still managed his Le Mans debut. He also raced a Group C car at Spa and took part in the Tasman Revival.

This friendly ex-pat American made the UK his home in 1968 and has been involved in motor racing as a competitor since 1959. Even earlier, in 1956, he raced in the conceptual season of karting. Ed has raced in just about everything and everywhere. In recent years he has combined his driving experiences more with writing, testing historic grand prix and sports cars for, among others, Vintage Racecar, Autocollezioni, Auto Italia and Porsche Post magazines.

Now an established motor sport historian with an important photo archive, he also has six books to his credit including the definitive history of the Alfa Romeo Tipo 33 (published early 2006 and co-produced with Peter Collins) and his latest: the first ever biography of Marquis Alfonso de Portago.

Lawrence and his Lancia Integrale on their way to RallyLegends, San Remo. As Rallies Editor he continually provides Retro-Speed with up-to-date images of major historic rallies, rally shows and events along with breath-taking video footage.

Lawrence manages to combine his love of everything to do with classic cars and classic aircraft with his specialist wedding photography business, Lawrence Clift Photography. 

Tel: 01772 621421
Mobile: 07979 016274
lawrenceclift@blueyonder.co.uk
www.lawrencecliftphotography.co.uk

Joan established her reputation at the Royal Automobile Club as Chief Librarian and archivist in charge of the motoring library at Pall Mall where she remained until 2000, leaving to go freelance. She also discovered that getting older had certain advantages in that car sickness disappeared and she was able to navigate for Dave on various events.

Joan and husband Dave have been associated with rallying and motor sport for a long time. Dave first started during university, navigating for Brian Hugh in a Cooper S on Motoring News events in the 1960s. Then came events with drivers such as Don Pither and Harold Morley. But life as a petrochemist with Shell meant long periods abroad, including acting as Motoring News Far Eastern correspondent in the early 1970s when posted to Japan.

In 1973 they purchased LUP 62J, the ex-works Clan Crusader, which was then put to good use until children’s education budgets put rallying onto the back burner. In 1988, along with Brian Hugh, they were invited to marshal on Philip Young’s first Classic Marathon and never looked back, having taken part in nearly every event.

We first met Mike around one in the morning at the conclusion of the Rallye Monte-Carlo Historique. It had been a tough night behind the wheel and it was himself who realised how much repair a large glass of wine or three would do to my ailing soul. Of course, it came as no surprise to find Mike was a long time friend of our European Editor, Peter Collins, and they were in fact sharing a rental car in which to follow the event and take pictures.

Mike was born in Cheshire but at some point applied for a passport and emigrated to the West Country where, unlike the rest of us, he continues to hold down a job of some responsibility. In the past he has sold insurance to the likes of Eddie Jordan (not an easy task) and Chevron, supported Racing For Britain and even sponsored a Formula 3 racing team with the help of brokers, Ocean Ajax.

It is unclear as to why such a well respected journalist as Ian Shapland should put his reputation at risk and join the Retro-Speed team. It can’t be the money. But if nothing else it proves he is a man of impeccably good taste.

Ian, modest and still relatively young, has enjoyed much success both on and off special stages. Being badly misunderstood by the racing fraternity he took to rallying and in 1988 and 1989 won Alpine Cups on both Classic Marathons. Two years later he finished fifth overall on the Monte Carlo Challenge co-driving for ex-European Touring Car Champion, John Handley. However, his best result still remains second place on the historic International Manx Rally behind the wheel of his beloved Mercedes 220SE ‘fintail’.

As journalist and cartoonist he contributed first to Auto Classic magazine before moving on to, among others, Autosport and Motoring News. For more than ten years he has edited oldSTAGER magazine, drawn, sketched and painted famous rally cars and concentrated on his graphic design business. Now he has decided to assist in our new venture and I for one am very pleased.

Ben Lawrence, son of leading motorsport journalist Paul Lawrence, has been contributing to Retro-Speed from the age of 11.

Mark’s first rally in the 1970s was in a Mk1 Escort, as navigator for Charlie Gabb on a York Motor Club night event.

He recalls it was foggy and going “straight on at T.” Unperturbed he continued with a variety of hot Cortinas including a Lotus before moving on to Midgets and Sprites.

The desire to go circuit racing was biting hard so, not withstanding the limited budget and lack of family enthusiasm for the project, he turned up at Silverstone in 1989 behind the wheel of another Lotus Cortina and loved every minute.

Mark joined Jim Evans and started building race engines for a living. His most recent project has been preparing an MG L type.

One of life’s dreamers, Retro-Gnome gets the blame for everything that goes wrong in the office. Always in the wrong place at the wrong time but he has a heart of gold. And in spite of everything we love him because he’s cuddly.

When he took to the track he clobbered the banking first time out and broke nearly every bone in his body but when released from the safety harness, semi-conscious and upside down, the broad smile was still on his face. Since then he has promised to wear his glasses at all times.

Luckily he works hard, can throw together a good feature, doesn’t drink and lives on vegetarian food, so we can pay him out of petty cash. Ideal situation.

From the beginning Mark has been associated with progressive IT projects and is committed to software development. He was involved with introducing Lucas Aerospace's global component forecasting systems, Lloyds Bank offshore statement production and distribution and, in a more light-hearted vein, Tiger Tokens (from Esso).

He works from his home in the Cotswolds with his wife, Janice, and designs web-based applications and web sites like this one. He now manages more than 500 domains.

We pursuaded him to dump his Ford Fiesta (wrong image) and move onto a Jaguar XKR but he is still reluctant to part with his faithful Volvo Estate. However, all is not lost as he has caught the Retro-Speed passion for Aston Martin. When it comes to motor sport he is an unswervable McLaren-Mercedes fan.

Here at Retro-Towers it’s my my role to keep the Team in order. It's okay for them to wander the world having a good time but someone has to stay home to do all the hard work such as putting the magazine together, agreeing the expenses and paying the bills.