‘We have recently acquired Brian’s beautiful 1989 Porsche 930 Turbo, one from the last year of the model’s production. The Porsche 930 Turbo was the maker’s top-of-the-range 911 model for its entire production duration and, at the time of its introduction, was the fastest production car available in Germany. The 1989 models were the first and last versions of the 930 to feature the highly desirable Getrag G50 five-speed manual transmission.

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‘But this beautiful machine was never used by Brian as a rally-car, which activity became a personal quest. ‘It was the only sport at which I really excelled. And one that I found I didn’t really need to practice.’ The reality was that Brian Powley simply loved driving fast, being behind the wheel of a gloriously crafted man-machine. The tales come thick and fast: ‘We were doing 141 mph in the dark alongside the lake in the International Lakes Rally in Ireland, which became the jewel in the crown of Irish rallying. We were coming down the mountain and saw the red lights of the lead car. I caught him a quarter mile from the end of the race. And I had to pass him. And did.’

‘In the days when Brian Powley was racing it, at first in his personally built Mini Cooper S, the event was held in the depths of winter – icy road surfaces frequently a hazard – as the finale to the Irish Tarmac Championship.

‘Later Brian acquired a Porsche T/R, the race-tuned variant of the 911; only 35 of these beauties were built, and only three of these had right-hand drive – Brian’s was one of them. ‘Paddy McNally sold me his T/R. And he’d raced it for a couple of years.’ Patrick McNally worked alongside Bernie Ecclestone, who ran Formula One. In 2006 McNally sold his company to Ecclestone, for a reputed £260 million.

‘One night I came back from from this nightclub called the Odd Spot in Liverpool. I’d picked up a girl and we stopped at the Wimpy bar [an early chain of UK hamburger joints] in the suburb of Bromborough and in came Paul and Linda McCartney with their kids, (who I thought were a bit rowdy).’

‘At first Brian competed in a Mini Cooper S, that archetypal symbol of the Swinging Sixties, that he had built himself at the family Cheshire farm into a rally car. For his second ever rally he competed in the Wales World’s End rally, one of the oldest on the calendar having been first run in 1932, coming 10th.

‘Even in the wet, which in fact I really liked: the Mini Cooper S was extremely nimble in the wet.’

‘Acquiring his Porsche 911 T/R in the mid-1980s, Brian Powley raced and rallied the car for fourteen years. At Dublin’s Phoenix Park, on the Grand Prix circuit, he came second. At the German world rally championship he took the same position to his friend Armin Schwarz, who was driving a Lancia. Moving to the United States he took part in the T/R in Georgia’s Le Petit Le Mans.

‘Brian’s rallying life, it seems, was one of this quiet legend’s true high spots: ‘I had some bloody good fun: the rallying social life was tremendous.’

‘So it would seem: Brian has been married seven times.

-Alex Manos, Owner