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.....Chevrolet V8s, similar to those used in CamAm racing.
As a rally mechanic, Ray first serviced on the Gulf London classics, and today he's one of a handful of genuinely highly skilled engineers who is equally effective and decisive whether pushed hard for time on a freezing night in snow covered service areas as he is in the warmth of the workshop. The first rally Escort he built for Geoff was put together in the letter's double garage at home, ("it frustrated us in that garage; with no ramp, no room, and the next door neighbours...") and he takes a keen interest in engineering development within the sport, constantly observing, noting and occasionally asking questions. Ray's not a man to waste words, and neither does he waste much time. Yet the thoroughness, neatness and attention to detail of his preparation work is openly admired by rallying's engineering cognoscenti... just ask John Taylor; Roger Clark; Paul Chopping; Mike Taylor, etc.
Dave Campion, MCO's operations manager, although he doesn't actually possess a job title and insists he's a jack of all trades, is quite clearly in firm control of all matters, whether they be VAT registrations or movement schedules. A long time friend of Tony Goulding (Fielding's regular co-driver and a former Clerk of the Course on the Plains Rally) who first introduced him to Geoff, Dave was born in Cambridge and had lived in Derby, Nottingham and Cardiff before he was five years old.
The death of his father prompted a family move to Merseyside, and after a spell at technical college, he served his apprenticeship with the fortuitously local Rolls Royce/Bentley concessionaires. But it was as service manager for a major Renault dealership that he first became drawn into the competition world, building cars for Vicky Lambert (later to become Malcolm Patrick's wife).
As a great believer in the 'big-fish-in-a-small-pool'theory; Dave's next move, to a smaller, country-based Renault dealership, was utterly in character, since the challenge of advancement and expansion would be his for the making; he could enjoy a considerable level of autonomy, and as he saw (and still sees) it, "as long as I did my job right, I was going to grow with the company."
When Geoff appoached him with the MCD offer, Dave was "in a good job, earning good money, with good prospects; growing with an expanding company'. Then, why move?
"Well, this is not the sort of job opportunity you get offered very often, and I suppose that when it really comes down to it, this is the sort of thing I really enjoy and take pride in doing.
"I felt that Geoff would be able to give me the chance to prove his faith in the new company, and I felt that we could do the job.
Dave remains a regular club rally competitor, as many of those closely associated with the Tour of Mull will know, yet with his ambitions for MCD Services, his knowledge of the automobile trade, his grounding in engineering, his business acumen and his no-nonsense straight-talking approach, he's almost ideally suited to the job he does. Rally coordination is currently his most satisfying task, and the success of his service plans on this year's Monte Carlo rally, and later on the Welsh when three MCD cars were competing, gave him particular satisfaction.
Like Ray, he's very much a believer in the maxim that if you can't do something right, then you shouldn't do it at all; which of course fits in splendidly with the way in which Geoff Fielding likes to approach rallying.
MCD Services has now been trading for two years; its first major client being Malcolm Patrick who had his BTRDA Championship winning Escort built, prepared, and on-event serviced by MCD. Despite a hectic season involving the entire BTRDA and CastrolMufosport championships, as well as a few internationals, the car only retired five times; four of which came as a result of engine or gearbox maladies over which MCD had no control.
It was a good beginning but it also begged the question, where was MCD Services going; was it to become a customer preparation service, or was it practising to become its own, self-contained, sponsored team? Geoff Fielding: "It's simply grown around my rallying. I hadn't intended to promote it except that I wanted it to be a commercial proposition from the start, and not just some private venture. When Malcolm Patrick came to us, he said he wanted the best car, that he was prepared to pay for it, and were we up to it? That's the kind of customer we're after. We're expensive but we're good and we don't want our reputation taken out of our hands by dint of the fact that we lose control of our cars - hence the idea of forming an entirely self-contained team."
Dave concurs: "we'd prefer to control our own destiny; that's why we'd be reluctant to supply customer engines, even though we build and prepare our own. Basically, we want to build cars the way we want to build them, for us to run, and driven by professional drivers on behalf of a professional sponsor......
Captions -
Middle - Geoff Fielding: "We like to think we're very professional here, and we don't want that image scratched; after all, the image promoted is the image you're promoting."
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