40 years of Prodrive: tracing the story of motorsport success

It’s onerous to discover a definition that adequately covers each a part of David Richards’ Prodrive agency – and that’s awkward, as this yr it celebrates 40 years of roughly steady enterprise success, together with a few of the best moments in UK motorsport historical past.

Prodrive’s personal brochure description of itself as “the world’s main impartial motorsport firm” solely goes partway in direction of doing the job.

It definitely encompasses the corporate’s best-known successes, comparable to successful sufficient WRC rallies (46) for Subaru in 18 years to vary your complete form and public notion of the Japanese model and scoring seven Le Mans class wins and 11 GT titles for Aston Martin since establishing a race programme in 2004.

But it fails to cowl a plethora of different actions. Your long-wheelbase Vary Rover Autobiography would possibly nicely have a mechanised cocktail cupboard made in Banbury. Your Gazoo Racing sweatshirt, your e-bike or your Ian Callum-designed driving simulator may all have had their beginnings there. Perhaps Prodrive’s composites division made the stainless carbonfibre physique elements in your £100,000-plus British luxurious saloon too.

About 15 years into its existence, explains Richards, Prodrive began seeing alternatives in excessive know-how and high quality manufacturing and has specialised in such issues ever since.

To start with, there was no plan. Richards’ enterprise profession began when he acquired a last-minute supply to hurry to Kuwait and end organising a automotive rally for Rothmans, the sponsor. The timing was good: on the age of 23, he had simply completed his accountancy articles and was having “a form of sabbatical” co-driving in rallies with Tony Pond.

The deal wanted prompt dedication: he wanted to be on the airplane the next day. However there was a draw back: the earlier organiser had been shot. Nonetheless, Richards accepted, and issues went so nicely that Rothmans was quickly again on the telephone asking him to organise a much bigger collection of occasions in Qatar. And that labored too.

That is an early instance of certainly one of his long-held beliefs: “It’s a must to see alternatives as they arrive – and they’ll – then seize them with each palms. The trick is to not be risk-averse.”

Richards’ enterprise involvement elevated, however his participation in rallies continued for a couple of extra years. He dealt nicely with alternatives to handle different rally initiatives, notably for Fiat and Ford. Alongside the best way, he turned quick associates with rising Finnish star Ari Vatanen, and the pair turned prime opponents themselves, successful the 1981 WRC title in a Rothmans Ford Escort.

After that, Richards matter-of-factly determined that enterprise appealed greater than the peripatetic life of a professional rally co-driver (“having two younger youngsters made that form of life fairly fraught”).

His Rothmans contacts offered early work on the March Components 1 staff, however that didn’t final lengthy. “Our automotive wasn’t good,” he explains, “and when it didn’t qualify at Monaco, with two Marlboro [sponsored] automobiles on the entrance, it appeared time to advise them to cease.

“One of many drivers, Jochen Mass, was very near Rothmans, and I’d heard that Porsche was getting again into sports activities automotive racing, so I urged to Jochen that we strategy Rothmans to sponsor a Porsche staff.”

That led to a dedication on either side, and a profitable staff was constructed from 1983, starring massive names like Mass, Derek Bell, Jacky Ickx, Vern Schuppan and Stefan Bellof.

Richards additionally heard Porsche was constructing a 959 rally automotive to Group B guidelines, which offered a possibility to construct his personal rally staff. He ran an early automotive for Porsche within the 1983 Qatar Rally: it received however nearly broke in half.

After that, Porsche started working its personal automobiles, so Richards and his band lobbied to get certainly one of their very own – a request that was granted however that turned out to be a shell and a pile of bits. A reputable automotive was created in brief order by grasp engineer David Lapworth, not too long ago arrived from the Peugeot Talbot sports activities division. He has been certainly one of Richards’ ‘sensible males’ ever since. The British-entered 959 quickly began successful in Europe and the Center East.

The staff was tagged Rothmans Porsche Rally Staff, however the operator was a brand new entity known as David Richards Autosport, primarily based in a former tyre-fitting store close to the doorway to Silverstone circuit.

“I’d heard a few Swiss lawyer trying to get into driver illustration, who already had parallel companies that had been known as one thing like Proserve [for tennis] and Progolf,” explains Richards. “It struck me that Prodrive sounded good, so we began utilizing that and it caught.”

When the controversial Group B class was discontinued in 1986, the agency’s prospects appeared rocky for a time, however Richards quickly secured an introduction to BMW Motorsport boss Wolfgang-Peter Flohr, who had began promoting race automotive kits for M3s. 

The Prodrive crew reckoned these may very well be tailored for rallying, and by probability Flohr had been speaking to a French staff thinking about the identical factor. Lapworth and co (Prodrive now had about 20 workers) set about adapting the roll-cage and suspension and constructed a brand new racing canine ’field to interchange the weak, all-synchromesh five-speeder.

Prodrive began discovering clients in Belgium, Italy and France. It moved to higher premises in Banbury at about the identical time and began discovering its ft. “We entered the 1987 Corsica Rally and received,” remembers Lapworth. “It was the beginning of every part.”

Prodrive constructed 38 competitors M3s over about three years, together with BTCC observe variations for Frank Sytner, who did very nicely. That launched Prodrive into observe race automobiles, constructing them first for BMW, then Alfa Romeo, Honda, Ford and Volvo.

However the greatest deal of all was again on the rally scene: a request from a mysterious Mr Kuze, who represented the obscure Subaru firm. He had watched Prodrive’s M3s within the 1000 Lakes Rally and been impressed sufficient to request a gathering with Richards.

They introduced him to the headquarters, lunched him, talked automobiles so much, then delivered him to the airport. It led to a suggestion to marketing campaign Subarus in WRC occasions on behalf of the manufacturing unit. By the point he was again at his desk in Tokyo, a proposal from Richards had arrived, explaining the way it may very well be achieved. Ryuichiro Kuze can be Prodrive’s prime Japanese contact for the subsequent 18 years.

“As soon as once more, the timing was good,” explains Richards. “The BMW had been good for us, nevertheless it was getting much less aggressive, as a result of it didn’t have four-wheel drive. We knew so little about Subaru that we needed to look them up in books.

However we quickly discovered that the Legacy, the automotive they first needed to marketing campaign, had the 2 issues that basically mattered: a turbocharger and four-wheel drive. Nothing else mattered as a lot.”

The primary entry was pushed by Markku Alén within the 1990 Acropolis Rally. He received the primary stage however had a suspension breakage on the second. He saved going, although, and completed fourth.

From there, the trendy historical past of Prodrive started: the 18 stellar Subaru years, the rise to iconic standing of Colin McRae and Richard Burns, the common victories and the titles that modified the picture of Subaru eternally. However then it ended.

“The recession was actually beginning to chunk,” remembers Richards, “and when the Japanese administration noticed that Honda weren’t being pilloried for withdrawing from F1 on financial grounds, they did the identical [from the WRC].”

By then, the Aston Martin Racing programme was in full swing at Prodrive, having begun in 2004, quickly after the all-new DB9 reached manufacturing. For six years from 2007, Richards was truly chairman of Aston, having led a buyout from Ford on behalf of Center Japanese traders. Though it has modified form a couple of instances, Prodrive nonetheless has an enormous enterprise making ready racing Astons (there are at the very least 500 in motion all over the world), and people with one of the best provenance promote for eye-watering costs.

The agency has saved branching out too, inside the previous three years breaking into Dakar Rally endurance raiding with the Bahraini-backed Prodrive Hunter after which the Dacia Sandrider, being readied for 2025 with Sébastien Loeb, already a Prodrive common, as star driver.

And naturally it has produced its first own-brand street automotive, the P25, a contemporary recreation of the legendary Subaru Impreza 22B that ranked strongly at Autocar’s most up-to-date ‘Dealing with Day’.

In the meantime, Banbury nonetheless has a thriving Subaru preparation enterprise (known as Prodrive Heritage) and makes an enormous subject of supplying elements and rebuilding engines for all its automobiles.

“We attempt to assist our homeowners very nicely,” says Richards. “Individuals usually make the error of shopping for a successful automotive from a significant producer, then discovering it isn’t a lot use, as a result of there’s no assist. We see our job as to construct the automotive nicely, to show it really works by successful races, to have engineers who know the right way to preserve it and to have a wide array of elements on faucet. That has at all times been Prodrive’s mission, and it’s what we’ll at all times do.”