A full life in the fast lane

RACING LEGACY: FROM MOTORCYCLE CHAMPION TO MOTORSPORT COMMENTATOR

- Brendan Seery

After a few cranks, the V6 engine in the blood-red Alfa Romeo splutters to life, angry at being woken so quickly from its slumber in the garage of an East Rand collector. It simmers down to a grumpy rumble as if throwing out the challenge: Okay! Who wants to race?

As he watches and listens, there's a rapt schoolboy-like smile on the face of Roger McCleery which, at 90, just proves the truism that once a petrolhead, always a petrolhead. But there's more than a trace of parental pride there, too, because this 3.0 litre GTV is McCleery's baby.

It was his brainwave, back in the early 1980s, to take the specially race-modified engine and stick it into a limited production run of 210 of the cars in South Africa, to make it eligible for saloon car racing. In the process, though, it became world-renowned and sought after as a classic.

"In those days, South Africa was a world leader in this sort of thing because we had the vision, the engineering ability and we weren't scared to do something no-one else was doing."

The Alfa was one in an array of unique-to-SA Fords, Chevs, Datsuns (later Nissans) and BMWs which set the local racetracks alight and the hearts of motor racing fans pounding.

McCleery has lived to see the GTV 3.0 toasted by classic car aficionados and fetch prices of upward of a R1 million locally... and more overseas.

But that is only the tip of a very massive automotive iceberg for the man who, at various stages in his long career with wheeled transport, been known as "Mr Motor Cycle" or even "Mr Microphone" after a long spell as the country's top motor-sport commentator.