(movies at the bottom)

December 1993.

I set out early on a sunday morning to fill the car up, give her a clean and go for a brisk country lane drive. Little do I know, a black unmarked Rover is about to cross my path, videotaping the road ahead with on-board VASCAR equipment.

The Road is the A217. As I navigate the large Kingswood roundabout the two officers' ongoing debate about greasy spoon cafes is interupted. As they crest the approach they can just about make out a yellow frog-shaped vehicle crossing their path up ahead. One of them spots me and low and behold, recognises me. Yes, one of these two gentleman knows me. Oh dear, he is the same copper who stopped me only 7 days previous to issue me with an SP30 speeding penalty just 2 miles away from this current location.

Coming off the kingswood roundabout there's a nice long lucious straight. I floor the 215bhp BBR M100 Elan turbo and am soon into double figures. The policemen respond accordingly to try and keep me within sight. Their on board equipment now shows speeds of 97mph. The driver is refreshing his memory:

"Ahhh....this is the one I stopped in firtree road the other day.. sure it is....for speeding yeah..... he's a youngster...... and he says 'I just can't slow down' "

Soon its the end of the straight and there's another smaller roundabout up ahead. The unmarked car catches up but as he exits the roundabout there's a sigh of disappointment heard from the recorder. Wind is blowing into the Elan and has caused some paperwork inside the car to flap about. I've pulled over to the slow lane to sort it out and am now comfortably below the speed limit.

Still, the copilot sets the VASCAR and uses a line in the road surface change to start the timing of my vehicle speed: "going on .... now !" But then it looks as if their speed measurements will prove inconsequential:

"he's not actually going that fast, he might have learnt his lesson."

The police pull in behind me in the slow lane of the 40mph stretch and all they can do is sit back and wait. No to worry though, my loose papers inside the car are now secure in the glovebox and I can pull out into the fast lane and continue on my way. The unmarked car again accelerates, reaching 73mph this time and just before I brake for yet another roundabout the officer marks the end of the timed stretch of road as I cross another visible pelican crossing line in the road: "going off... now". When they reach the same white line in the road the VASCAR is informed again "going off .......now" and up pops the average speed of my car over that 0.599 of a mile:

"sixty point three zero... thats Gooooood enough !"

This time I'm going right round the roundabout and back on myself. Coming up close to my rear end the driver sees something that confirms my identity 100%: "that is the same bloke". A tirumphant whistle is heard from the cabin and then the copilot asks if he can wind his window back up again ???

"Here we go.... blue light activated.....bit of sound ....." <wow>

"rear blue, rear red" ??????

download 12mb windows media file of the BBR Elan & Unmarked police

Footnote:

The footage was obtained by request from the Surrey police. It is on a very old VHS I posess and in places is virtually untrackable. Feeding it into a camera, the signal intermittently cuts out so I had to also film it being played on my television and then edit between the two clips to create a complete full length movie.

Some of the police dialogue I still to this day cannot fathom out... especially the bit at the end. If you have any ideas then please mail me. And lastly, I don't speed like this anymore (i.e. when I was just 23 years of age) - do it all on racetracks and airfields these days.