Mick Hyde co-founder of Radical Sports Cars tells the BBC’s Suzie Roberts they are celebrating the construction of their 1000th car at their Westwood Peterborough factory. This interview was broadcast at 07:45 on Thursday 27th May in the Peterborough Breakfast Show on BBC Radio Cambridgeshire hosted by Andy Gall.
ANDY: Now the Peterborough-based sports racing car manufacturer Radical is celebrating this week, as its one thousandth car rolled off the production line. Now Suzie Roberts is not exactly a petrol-head, but she is married to one. So we sent her down to the factory in Westwood to see what’s going on. (TAPE)
SUZIE: I have to say I am very excited about being here at Radical Sports cars. Mick Hyde is the co-founder. Mick I wouldn’t have imagined, being in Peterborough, I wouldn’t have imagined to be standing beside these amazing sports cars.
MICK: Yes, well we’ve been in Peterborough for thirteen years. We started in Fengate, in a little unit there, and we moved here about eight years ago. Yes, we’re a global company, so we don’t spend a lot of time marketing ourselves to Peterborough. We make about six different models. This one you see in front of us is our most popular. It’s called an SR3. It’s a two seater sports racing car. Our most powerful one has our own V-8 engine in, which we build in-house. That puts out nearly five hundred brake horse power, and it is the fastest production sports care in the world, as is proven by the fact that we have the lap record round the Nurburgring …
SUZIE: Aaah.
MICK: .. which every petrol-head will know is the most demanding race circuit in the world.
SUZIE: Mick, tell me what sort of people do you sell these cars to?
MICK: Our customer base is generally wealthy successful businessmen, who have their bit of a mid-live crisis ..
SUZIE: (laughs)
MICK: .. and decide they would like to race at Le Mans.
SUZIE: How much then would one of these set you back?
MICK: Our basic model will start at around thirty thousand pounds, plus the old VAT. If you go up to our V-8 engined car, and you tick all the boxes, that’s about a hundred thousand pounds.
SUZIE: So I possibly won’t be buying one this year. What’s your name sir? What do you do?
DARREN: Darren Nicholls. I build the production cars, starting from the chassis, skinning, installing the engine, the bodywork, electrics, water system, oil system.
SUZIE: So you do the lot? How did you get into this?
DARREN: Just by chance really. I contacted Radical MotorSport, and took it from there.
SUZIE: And is it satisfying, seeing the end product coming off the line?
DARREN: Very satisfying yes.
MICK: I think that’s a customer who’s just bought one, I think.
SUZIE: You’re looking very pleased. You’ve got a huge grin from ear to ear. You’ve got a camera in your hand. Is this your car?
CUSTOMER: I just bought it. Yes. I came over from Germany to see the car. I got treated very nice. I’m very confident in buying this car.
SUZIE: Look at you! It’s like Christmas. (laughs)
CUSTOMER: (laughs) It is. Yes. Absolutely.
SUZIE: Are you going to be driving this baby here?
CUSTOMER: Yes. Sure. This is ready for racing, and that’s what I’m going to do, what I’ll be doing, in the Nurburgring, sometime mid-June.
SUZIE: So how do you think your new purchase is going to perform?
CUSTOMER: The car will do perfect. I am very confident about that. Let’s see how I’m going to do. (laughs)
ANDY: (LIVE) Suzie Roberts at Radical Cars in Peterborough where they’ve just experienced today, well just had their one thousandth car roll off the production line.