Getting some face time with any one of these industry giants is a huge opportunity, hard earned. Getting John Hennessey, Gordon Murray, Mate Rimac and Christian von Koenigsegg together at the same time, in the same place… yeah, good luck with that one, Jack! And yet, through dogged determination, the juicy carrot/potential deterrent of a night out with us at the TopGear.com awards and some sizable planet alignment, there we were, on the top floor of a pub next to TG HQ. Me, squeezed into my wedding suit, fumbling in the golden tombola of topics, perched opposite four of the world’s most influential men in shaping what the high performance car did, does and will do in the future. It was quite the scoop.
We wanted to subvert the usual interview dynamic. Not another alpha CEO holding court, dictating the agenda, dribbling out news nuggets for the journalist to snaffle. No, we wanted them to talk to each other, for the presence of the other three to diffuse egos and stimulate brain cells… to simply shoot the breeze on the world of cars. As chair, my intention was to lay seeds of conversation, then retreat as they took the bait and started pinging off the limiter.
I was expecting clashes of opinion, chest beating, a little name calling at the very least… but the mood remained mystifyingly calm. The respect in the room was palpable. Each arrived with an open mind and genuine excitement to meet the others. Listening, it turns out, might be the key to success. And the dynamic was fascinating: Gordon the Elder sprinkling his rhetoric with wonderful tales from the F1 coalface, speaking with the calm assurance of someone with several lives of experience in the bag. John Hennessey, the tuner turned hypercar maker championing his own freewheeling route one philosophy, then citing Mario Andretti blasting past in a McLaren F1 30 years ago as one of his inspirations. Mate Rimac, the depressingly young upstart grasping the potential of EVs in one hand and the importance of combustion engines in the other, then mapping out a bright future for both, and Christian von Koenigsegg, the frozen chicken salesman turned performance car deity, talking about his patented 33 per cent failure rate. If hearing these four extraordinary men talk openly isn’t enough to prove anything’s possible, I don’t know what is.
And to fans of Ken Block everywhere, but especially his friends and family, our thoughts are with you all. I hope Chris Harris’ tribute on p92 reminds you of how much he meant to so many. Slide in peace, Ken.
Enjoy the issue,

Jack Rix – Editor

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