As a young mechanic, Jack Towler always dreamed of racing cars.
For various reasons, not least lack of money and a sometimes hedonistic lifestyle, he had to wait until after his 50th birthday before getting his hands on a racecar.
“In my youth I drove anything I could get hold of,” he says. “I tended to sway towards German cars and I had a few Beetles, basically because you could do everything on it yourself.
“Some of them were held together with gaffer tape and once they finally broke that was it, because I didn’t have a pot to piss in.”
By the early 2000s, and now a publican in Norwich having long since hung up his spanners, Jack finally had the wherewithal to follow his dream.
“When I came down to earth,” he laughs, “I thought ‘I’ve got the money now, it’s time to fulfil my boyhood wish’.”
He travelled to “somewhere in Essex” to pick up a 1972 BMW 2002tii that had previously won its class in the Kumho challenge.
Jack, now 71, paid about £5,000 for the car, which came with a handwritten list of lap times (pictured) achieved at many of the country’s leading race circuits.
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The 2002tii was arguably the car that launched the compact sports saloon sector of today, with its fuel-injected 1990cc engine producing a healthy 128hp – enough to propel the car to a top speed of 115mph.
It laid the foundation for the hugely successful, all-conquering 3-series, and the BMW 02 series as a whole played a major role in the revival of the Bavarian carmakers fortunes.
Jack’s car was obviously far from standard, in race trim, but in need of work.
The engine was stripped down and rebuilt with Mahle pistons, a Schrick camshaft, and a high compression head, later measured at 197bhp from the original but modified BMW unit.
But while the build was still underway, another car caught Jack’s attention – a Tommykaira sports car available from Breckland Technologies in Dereham, Norfolk.
Video gamers will know the Tommykaira name from appearances by several of its custom cars in Gran Turismo and Forza Motorsport.
But UK production of the ZZ roadster, later renamed the Leading Edge 190 RT, was short lived because of manufacturing and economic problems.
So when the Tommykaira became available, Jack shelved the BMW build and took to the track in the Japanese-conceived, Norfolk-built sportster weighing just 765kg and powered by a 2-litre Nissan engine.
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“I had a lot of help from Brian Branson, an old racer who has since passed away,” he says, “and it was a steep learning curve, but I really took it seriously.”
Jack competed in the 750 Motor Club’s Roadsport series all over the UK, and “won a load of trophies” which he proudly displays in his riverside home.
The Nissan unit, which was “pretty much unbreakable”, punched out 200bhp but Jack was competing against much more powerful cars including Porsche 911s and Nobles.
His finest hour came at his local track, Snetterton, when he saw off all the competition to take an overall win ahead of a Noble.
“It was really hard,” he says, “mine was only a 2-litre up against 3 and 4-litre cars, and I’m very happy about that win, and I’ve got the trophy to prove it!”
There were also plenty of class wins and podiums, including a Class D win in the Birkett Six-Hour Relay on the Grand Prix circuit at Silverstone in October 2007.
But then, with the BMW still yet to hit the race track, disaster struck when Jack suffered a stroke, curtailing his racing ambitions.
The Tommykaira was sold, but the BMW remained. Why?
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“Because I had ideas of racing in classic saloon cars,” he says. “I did actually try but they wouldn’t let me on a technicality.”
Nevertheless, he continued to have work done on the car, including a respray in its current gunmetal metallic grey.
“We’ve been right through it,” he says, “the gearbox has been rebuilt, the racing brakes overhauled, Michelin Pilot tyres, everything.
“It’s been an ongoing thing really, and I had a racing licence until two years ago but I’ve never actually raced it.”
Having suffered another stroke early in 2023, the chances of ever competing in the 2002 have long-since receded, but he has driven it on both road and track, ruffling a few feathers with the noise from the straight-through exhaust.
“It turned a few heads when they heard me drive past,” he laughs. “I’ve probably only done about 200 miles in it in total, but that includes two spins round Snetterton on track days.”
Compared with the ultra-lightweight Tommykaira, it took some getting used to.“
This was a lot slower and more cumbersome by comparison,” he says, admitting to spinning the car on the bend near the course’s ‘scary tree’ – now not quite so scary since its iconic branches fell victim to Storm Ciara in 2020.
“But it gave me great satisfaction after all the work to finally get it out on the track.”
Over the years, Jack says he has “fallen in and out of love with the car lots of times”, never quite knowing whether to keep it or get rid of it.
“There have been times where I’ve thought ‘I’ve got to get rid of that’,” he says, even while continuing to have work done on the car, “and I do feel like that now, because I don’t think I could use it to its potential.
“But it’s the last thing I’ve got that I don’t want to let go. I had a Triumph Bonneville motorbike which I sold last year having owned it since 1998, but it’s quite unusual for me to keep hold of things.”
Might there be one last blast around Snetterton before this iconic BMW finds a new home?
“There might be,” he says, “it all depends on how I feel.”
