Circa 1983 Theseus Desborough asked me to import a Reynard FF, he was planning to move up from Formula Vee. In those days it wasn’t as easy to import racing cars as it is nowadays but I was already importing a variety of gear for my Flamecrusher company in NZ and Theseus knew I was experienced in working with Customs. I called Reynard, secured a deal, paid the deposit and waited for the build to start. Reynard was on the rise in the 80s and there was usually a long backlog of orders, in our case it took six months before the car was ready for delivery, this model being an FF83 complete with Minister engine. Meanwhile Theseus changed his mind so I started looking for another buyer.
About a week later I was off to Australia to meet ex-pat Kiwi David Haydon who was interested in distributing Flamecrusher products in NSW via his company Dalcar Industies. He collected me at Sydney airport and we stopped at a café en route to his factory for a get- to-know-you chat. Somewhere in the conversation he mentioned that he was interested in buying a Formula Ford for Tomas Merzera to drive in the Oz championship. At that stage Tomas was racing an old banger and not getting anywhere despite showing his obvious brilliance and was about to pack his bags and return to Europe to pick up his former career as a ski instructor. Timing is everything as they say and I gave David the clichéd “Boy do I have a deal for you” and he promptly wrote me a cheque for the full price. I called Reynard and had the car shipped directly to Sydney (so I briefly owned a Reynard without ever seeing it in the flesh…).
Tomas finished 5th in the 84 championship before cleaning up the 85 series and Merzera’s professional racing career really took off following this success and all thanks to David Haydon’s gutsy instant decision to buy that car sight unseen from someone he had only just met.