Ford RS1700T For Codemasters

Having recently rebuilt the Citroen DS3 R5 rally car for USA based racing driver Kyle Tilley, we took the newly wrapped car to meet Kyle at Sweet Lamb for a couple of days testing.

BGMsport once again supported Rallyday at Castle Combe last weekend and it was a pleasure to work with the team from Castle Combe to pull together all the cars and drivers for the Legends Rally Stage and the parade of the Burns and McRae cars.

It is with great pleasure that we have this fabulous Burnsie Peugeot 206 WRC in our care. Richard and Robert Reid drove this car to 2nd overall on Rallye Catalunya The car was supplied by the team at ‘Girardo & Co’ recently to its new owner Steve Rimmer.

When Max Girardo from ‘Girardo & Co’ told us there was a Citroen arriving here for us to prepare and run at Goodwood Festival of Speed 2021, we were quite excited when the car arrived at our workshop as we had no idea which car it would be!

We all love Travis Pastrana here at BGMsport and have been lucky enough to previously have him drive with the team, so we were all blown away when he came to drive Steve Rimmer’s Subaru Legacy and Max Girardo’s Subaru WRC.

It was a real treat for Ian to be invited to drive the Pikes Peak Fiesta in the Timed Shoot out at this year’s Festival of Speed. Having only briefly driven the car before, it was quite a car to tame on the hill in some tricky conditions at times.

We took the Safari spec TR7 V8 of Frank Tundo to Walters Arena to do some test miles in the car. The car ran perfectly all day and after a few adjustments to the dampers and springs it was amazing.

In year 2000, Richard Burns won the rally outright in this wonderfully original ex works car and BGMsport have had the pleasure of looking after the car for its current owner Chris Wilson for the past 3 years.

The team at BGMsport had a great fun day in Wales at Walters Arena on Wednesday this week. We took 3..........yes 3 ex works Prodrive Subaru Impreza WRC cars for their owner drivers to enjoy for the day.

Here is something we don’t get to see very often! Two RS1800, one fully restored and the other soon to have the BGMsport magic 😎

Here are a few photos of this lovely looking Citroen DS3 R5 rally car. The car was supplied by KG Motorsport who kindly put the new owner in touch with us. We have done some routine preparation on the car. We are now converting the car to gravel spec for the new owner.

Here we have one very special and original GpB Audi Quattro S1 E2. This car has recently been acquired through ‘Girardo & Co’ by our long term friend Steve Rimmer, owner of DirtFish, to form part of his amazing car collection, and guess what……………..he was happy for us to team up with ‘ Girardo & Co ‘ to help create their 2020 Christmas video!!!

We have recently carried out some maintenance work on this extremely special ex works Peugeot 205 T16 GpB rally car for its owner. The car won the Swedish Rally with Juha Kankkunen in 1986 and amazingly is in completely original condition.

On the 19th November 1980, 40 Years ago, Henri Toivonen and Paul White won the Lombard RAC Rally in the famous Talbot Sunbeam Lotus, KKV 444V.

We are all proud here at BGMsport to have worked on the very special McRae R4 car recently. Once the car was finished, we headed up to sunny Knockhill late last month to meet Jimmy and DirtFish writer David Evans to allow Jimmy to test the car and for David to write a story for DirtFish.

In these difficult time it was great to be able to send some of our customer cars to the Goodwood Speedweek. At the show was Ryan Champion who drove his ex works Subaru Impreza GpA car with his wife Jemma co-driving in the demo class putting on a great flamboyant display as usual!

The team here at BGMsport are extremely proud to have another one of Colin McRae’s cars in our workshops to have some re-commissioning and routine maintenance work done, it is a real honour.

BGMsport attended the Network Q Rally Revival based at Chester Race Course which was arranged to celebrate the 25th anniversary of Colin McRae winning the World Rally Championship.

BGMsport was at Race Retro, located at Stoneleigh Park, Coventry, in the UK. Its a great event to get up close and personal to some pretty cool historic and a few modern rally cars.

Renault 5 Turbo 1 (1980) - Tour De Corse Specifications. The history of this little car is quite impressive winning the Coupe de France des Rallyes Regionnaux outright in 1985 & 1990, with other successes in French rally and hill climb championships as well as winning another Coupe de France des Rallye in 1995, it was also the winning car in the "Champion de la Coupe de France des Courses de Cote" (Group F) in 2001. Over the years this historic car has been the focus of considerable media attention.

It was a real pleasure to be at the Autosports show in Birmingham, and we would like to say how wonderful it was to have so many visitors coming over to see our display and also to hear how many of you really appreciated our effort to be there. It really was smiles all round.

Quick look around the workshop today, we have a few cars getting a bit of TLC and a few rebuilds in progress, and some cars getting prepared for some up and coming events.

Chris Wilson and Andre Lotterer driving the BGMsport prepared AC Cobra "21 GUN" won the TT race at the Goodwood Revival on Sunday, regarded as probably the most prestigious event we could win in this car.

We had a great time at Rally Day, Castle Combe on Saturday. We took a number of cars for display and for demonstration and thankfully the weather was beautiful and very kind to us!

It was a very successful 3rd Classic Car Show in our home village of Syresham We took along the ex works Jimmy McRae Vauxhall Chevette HSR which Jimmy drove in 1980, along with an ex DTV Bedford CF van to go with it, also along with an original MK2 Ford Transit van which we towed the fabulous Ford RS1700T, a real step back in time.

4 years ago we finished the restoration on the ex works Jimmy McRae Vauxhall Chevette HSR which Jimmy drove in 1980. Soon after that, we purchased an ex DTV Bedford CF van to go with it. It needed a lot of love and attention and now it is all pretty much finished.

The car was driven by Marcus Gronholm at Pikes Peak in 2009 and finished 2nd overall. Originally built by Olsbergs MSE and commissioned by Ford USA as a 5 door car as the USA didn’t have 3 door car on the market.

We had a great weekend at Chateau Imnpey Hill Climb with Ralli 22. Ian drove Steve Rimmer’s fabulous Skoda Octavia WRC (big thanks Steve) on gravel tyres and thoroughly enjoyed driving it!

Another Goodwood Festival of Speed has been and gone and what a great event it was this year! All 6 cars we took to the rally stage ran perfectly as did the 3 cars we looked after on the hill climb.

Cameras were up and ready to take photos of the fantastic display of WRC Impreza’s when we took along 3 Ralli 22 members cars to Prodrive factory on Friday. The gathering was organised by Ralli 22’s Steve Davies and all cars and members form part of the group.

At the BGMsport workshop we had the unique opportunity to put all these wonderful Subaru’s together in the workshop, so it goes without saying that we had to take a few photos to share. So we have 3 Colin McRae cars, ( WRC 97 and 2 Legacy’s).

Just completed a road test in this very special car that only Colin McRae and Nicky Grist drove as a factory M-Sport car, 8th overall San Remo 2001, 4th overall Monte Carlo 2002 and crashed in Corsica while lying in 4th place overall.

BGMsport went to Daytona with the Ferrari Daytona for the very first time for the HSR Daytona Classic 24 hour in 2015 The team prepared the car driven by Tim Summers and shipped it to the event and then took care of it at the event on our usual arrive and drive package.

This car was a prototype RWD car designed by Ford Motor Company in The early 80'S to compete in Group B rallying. We believe that only 18 were built and of those only 5 exist today one being owned by Malcolm Wilson. When the car was finished we took it outside and took several photos of the finished car for our gallery.

Photos from behind the scenes for the making of the Girardo & Co Christmas 2018 video. This was a great photo opportunity to get some unique photos of a fabulous car with a tremendous history, that we know rally fans love so much.

Having now completed our 13th consecutive Festival of Speed, we would firstly like to thank Steve Rimmer for the use of some of his cars and Rick Smith and his team for running the stage so well as usual.

Great weekend at the Goodwood Revival for the first time running this beautiful 1965 AC Cobra of Chris Wilson and co-driven by Gregor Fisken in the RAC TT celebration race.

Still at the top of her game and putting on a great demonstration for the crowds at the Goodwood race circuit and putting in the fastest times on all runs on both days.

BGMsport are delighted to have these two very famous and iconic Henri Toivonen cars in the workshop.

Another year of Race Retro done and dusted. Great weekend with all our cars at this year’s show with the Chevette HSR on the Rallying with GpB stand, the Talbot Sunbeam Lotus on the REIS Insurance stand and the 3 Subaru WRC cars along with the Renault 5 TDC and the Sierra Cosworth which we took to the rally stage for demonstration.

Photo’s following the BGMsport prepared Colin McRae 1992 Subaru Legacy GPA car back in the hands of another McRae.

Great day today at the Speedmachine event at Silverstone. BGMsport and Dirtfish had on display a unique collection of rally and road cars side by side.

In 2017 it was great to get to Kenya for the inaugural Rift Valley 1000k safari rally and to meet with Frank and Carl Tundo and all the team with the TR7’s, which the team at BGMsport built the previous year.

No other way to put it other than “what a beautiful pair” of eye catching group A legacy’s and a rare coming together.

Photo's taken at the RAC club Pall Mall early 2014 of Henri Toivonen 1980 RAC winning car.

Gravel, dust and dirt with temperatures up to 35 degrees, what a superb event the Balkans Classic Endurance Rally was with a challenging 1200 kilometres of special stages.

Check out these photos from Race Retro 2015.

As we near the end of 2024, BGMsport are celebrating 15 years of working out of The Old Paintbox workshops and we have met and worked with some amazing people during this period, so we thought it would be nice to share some of our memories.