The Dream - Who, what, where and why Ropey Racing
Telling your mates that you’re going to start a brand, group, organisation, business, whatever it is, based around your hobby and passion is always a daunting task. It becomes more challenging when you plan to drag them along for the ride. If you ask anyone who knows me, they’ll tell you I’ve been trying to do my own thing for years, it’s not about making a career or ‘working for myself’, not at all, it’s about trying to create something that you believe has a place and should already exist. Many people have told me that what I want to achieve with Ropey Racing isn’t possible but that’s easy to tackle when you’re making up what you want to achieve every day. Instead of having a business plan, corporate strategy, vision or mission I simply wanted to do the following:
Make car parts that I couldn’t easily get hold of so others can
Use the money made from that to make existing parts more accessible
Have a good time whilst doing 1 and 2
So far, we’ve already hit an element of step 1 which makes me happier than dropping gears in the queensway tunnels in an attempt to upset everyone in Birmingham, legally of course. So the rest of Ropey Racing really is something of a mystery at this stage. The responses we’ve got, worldwide, have been great. People seem keen on the choices of cars we’ve looked at initially as they’re notoriously difficult to get parts for. The ZZW30, for example, is an excellent car to modify. I was doing things to the mk3 Mr2 when really, to fit in, I should have just bought an mx5. However it got attention at the time. Even the old boys, who I have the utmost respect for as they’re the ones I turn to for that niggly problem that only a purist would know, started to see what I was doing with the car and didn’t shun me as much as I expected. These cars are even more affordable now and they simply are an excellent platform to modify.
Whilst it looks quite subtle now, at the time doing this to an Mr2 was blasphemy.
So when my friends, who now join me in spending all there spare time keeping Ropey Racing alive, turned around to me and said “yup, we’re in”, it all started to become quite real. One of the key things for us going forward was how we related to car enthusiasts. We wanted to contrast the fact that sometimes you do things to your car that no mechanic would dream of to get it to work but in turn, it’s exactly what needed to be done. I will argue with anyone who says there is a better item on earth to fix certain things than a cable tie.
So Ropey Racing was born. For our international friends, Ropey might not be a term you’re familair with, so here’s what it means to us in the UK:
“Ropey - Of Poor quality, worse for wear or tired. ”
I hear your cries, why on earth would you name your brand after something with so many negative connotations. Well simply put, it’s ironic. We aim to put out nothing but the best quality. We run our own products on our cars and wouldn’t expect our customers to have anything but a high quality product. But there’s more to it than that. It’s about embracing how the outside world sometimes looks at us and our cars. From the tale i’ve already told of my MOT encounters to the look of disgust I sometimes get from parents in a supermarket car park. “Surely that’s not legal” they cry, “Look at that heap of scrap”. It never gets to me, especially as I see the look in their kids eyes as they light up in amazement, pointing and staring, fascinated by simply what on earth the car even is. Come on, I’m not the only one who checks my mirror and smiles when they see kids pointing, jaws wide. After all, it’s how a lot of us got into cars when we were young! So the irony of Ropey Racing, for me at least, represents all the reasons why we modify our cars in the simplest of ways.
Loved and hated. Exactly what I aimed for.
The next steps of what we’re trying to achieve with Ropey Racing is probably the most exciting. We’re reaching out to you all to find out what it is you’ve been trying to get but just can’t get hold of. We want to know what you’ve seen on other cars that you’d love to have on yours. Ropey Racing is as much yours as it is ours. We all plaster our cars with stickers of brands we relate to but we’re trying to take that to the next level and have parts on our cars that the subculture itself wants us to develop. So let us know. Hit us up on instagram or on the website. If all you’re after is a sticker, PM us and we might just sling you one for free!
Robin