ROBERT COUCHER: The Driver

'WHEN I ARRIVED IN LONDON IN THE 1990S, THE STREETS WERE LINED WITH CHOCOLATE BROWN CLASSICS'

What goes around comes around. As regular readers will know, some 20 years ago four optimists launched Octane. Hailing from motoring magazine backgrounds, publisher Geoff Love, managing editor David Lillywhite, advertising sales director Sanjay Seetanah and myself (plain old editor) decided to create a classic and performance car magazine – a publication that reflected the changing times in the classic car world.

It had moved along fast from simply being a hobby for hairy blokes who liked getting their fingers dirty – hell, we still do! – to vintage, classic, historic racing and rally cars being much more aspirational, collectable and part of the mainstream social fabric, as reflected by such events as the ever-popular Goodwood Festival of Speed and the swish Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance. The car game had changed, and we managed to ‘effectively tap into the zeitgeist of the historic car world: the people, the events, the action, the excitement’, as I optimistically wrote in the first Editor’s Note.