ALL ABOUT BEARDOG RACING

click on any image, all cars are still available.

I've worked in the Ad business for over 30 years as a Creative Director, and had been continually told by the suits in the business that a Logo has to represent the a companies corporate image. Well this is my company, it's not a serious company, it's all for fun, so I call it Beardog Racing, and the Logo is a representation of 'Bear' with some Cadillac bars just for fun.

I'm English, born in Bournemouth Dorset, I worked in the ad Biz living in Kent until 1974 then moved to the States to follow my career. When I was living in Kent I lived with my family in a quaint village called Trottiscliffe, situated half way between Biggin Hill and Brands Hatch, no wonder I gained an interest in all things Spitfire and Lotus, learning to fly RAF gliders and hanging out with the drivers in the paddock cafeteria at Brands every 'Practice Wednesday' I could during the 60's. Pretty neat huh! But the best part is that those drivers were Graham, Jim, Jack, John, and Bruce, back then you could join them for tea in the cafe and talk about cars, cars like Cortina's, Mini's, 25's, 158's...it was very different back then and I was lucky.

Anyway the bug bit, and it was the mid 60's, the Stones were still in Grammar & Technical School (yup my Technical School) they hadn't heard of the Blues, so I built Slot Cars, I built, I didn't race because I was lousy at it, but boy could I build, so I built and built until I went to Art College in 1971, but that's a whole different story, but it led to a very colorful career in the Ad Business, until computers took all the fun out of it, so what did I do...I started building Slot Cars.

I started by getting a new Scalex set complete with cars and track. In 2000 they hadn’t started equipping cars with neo magnets yet. They were undrivable, so I bought aftermarket neo magnets for my Williams and Jordan. Now they ran, but there was a lot missing. So I started planning, the company I was working for was going out of business, it was just after 9/11 and I was a specialized Creative Director concentrating in the travel industry. Understandably nobody was going on vacation via airplane, so the bottom was dropping out of my business.

So I had tons of time to play on the company computer. I drew up plans and contacted many people via e-mail. The first set of plans I drew up was for the McLaren, and it was with these plans that I contacted Andy Brown-Searle at AB Slotsport. some money changed hands and I was soon the proud owner of 50 spring steel chassis for a 1970’s model Indy Car. I was now committed (or should have been), with the chassis in hand the body master was made. I bucked traditional trends, I didn’t know about rapid prototyping or pantographs. So instead of carving the body, or putting plans into a CAD-CAM program I built the Mclaren just like the real thing, but with plastic and glass fibre. Each panel was hand formed, each cowl was moulded out of glass fibre over tiny bucks, and the whole thing assembled using super glue. When finished the prototype was sent to England to be moulded by the best company in the business. I used the best wheels…BWA, the best gears…Sonic, the best decals…Indycals, and had the bodies painted by Max Winter of Maxi Models, equipped them with TSRF tyres and Pattos Little Ripper motors.

Slot Car Illustrated reviewed the car, and proclaimed it to be the Rolls Royce of slot cars, it was entered in the Marconi Proxy Race, and finished second in stock form, I worked 16 hours a day marketing, packaging, assembling and sold all 50 for record amounts back then, made hardly any profit and took up drinking to handle the stress. Rewarding…yes but there had to be an easier way.

Story to be continued.