I was about 18 when i visited Smithfield Garage which was a VW - Audi main dealer and this was in 1986 and i was on a college visit with a lecturer called Barry Green who was the head of engineering at Bromsgrove Technical College and i was one of about twenty students visiting the premises which belonged to Martin Ladbroke who had attended the same course and college many years earlier. I can remember having seen my first Audi Quattro 4x4 Turbo in the metal and all of us were just frozen when we saw it in white with all the driving lamps and the wide alloys which were rare in those days. It was the rally weapon of its day and it was the first turbocharged car we had ever seen and the concept was as new and fresh as a car running on fresh air would be today! We were hoping to meet Martin but we were told that he had flown to Germany to take delivery of his new Porsche which was a 928s and that he was bemused by the fact that this was the most expensive car Porsche had and they were made to order and it had to be pre-paid and the waiting time was 3 months?? The following week we visited the Monarch Porsche Dealership which he had in Warwick and then the following week we visited the Smithfield VW dealer he had in Leamington-Spa. Down the road in Sparkhill was Mario Deliotti an Alfa Romeo main agent which occupied the premises of a former Cinema and i can remember meeting the man himself and their was a racing car in the showroom which i thought was an Alfa Romeo Formula 1 Racing Car on loan from the works team for publicity purposes but it later was revealed that Mario had his own racing team: Mario Deliotti Racing and that the car was an Ensign T175 with a Ford DFV which was one of two cars that had been prepared by him for the Formula 1 Grand Prix of 1978 at Silverstone driven by Geoff Lees! If you google Mario you will see him pictured with a young Nigel Mansel a few years before he drove for Arrows! Mansel and the Arrows Team and Mario would dine at Da Corrado's Restaurant on the Stratford Road at Monkspath and the owner of the restaurant; Bruno Collodi was a car enthiusiast with signed pictures and portraits of racing teams and drivers hung on the walls and on the same road opposite was a BMW dealer owned by David Prophet a former racing driver. Jack Moss who was the owner of Four Ashes Garage at the bottom of Gate Lane (now Johnsons) was a regular customer of the restaurant and he supplied Bruno with an Aston Martin DB3 to compliment his other cars one of which was a red Ferrari and when Jack moved his garage from Solihull to Pathlow in Wilmcote in the 1970's it was going to be an Alfa Romeo dealership initially although this never materialised and it became an independent Aston Martin agent and Jack had ran a racing car in the Aston Club Meets which was an early DB2 which at the time was being driven by Steven Bamford and won many races.