From Racing Dreams to Grand Designs: The Fearless Spirit of Robin Hamilton

The rolling Derbyshire countryside before us stretches as far as the eye can strain, the murky months of spring doing nothing to dampen our host’s enthusiasm. Robin Hamilton is outlining his most recent endeavour: a house-build on this very plot. Even in its embryonic stages you have to marvel at the sheer bravery of his scheme, much of the thinking behind its construction being highly original. No wonder, then, that it will ultimately be immortalised on the small screen in Grand Designs. It may be a world away from motor sport, yet this project is very much in keeping with his apparent go-it-alone ethos. First and foremost, this former racer knows his own mind.

“You either have the balls to do something or you don’t,” he quietly intones. “Having said that, I look back on our first attempt at Le Mans in 1977 with a range of emotions, including horror. I don’t know how we did it with what we had; so much could have gone wrong.” That year, Hamilton’s plucky equipe claimed 17th place overall with a car that began life in 1969 as an Aston Martin DBS V8. ‘Le Petit Camion’, as the locals dubbed it, was an unlikely racer, but it made perfect sense to Hamilton: making the improbable probable was a central theme in his competition career. That initial bid followed a raft of equally left-field projects and would also lead to him becoming a constructor in his own right. Hamilton was following a long-term plan and anticipated the road ahead would be cratered with potholes.

“As a child I played with Meccano and blew myself up with chemistry sets,” he smiles. “Then I discovered motorcycles. At 16 I was dealing in them, but what started me off was an Ariel Red Hunter. It was crude but I had this idea to develop and race it. I wanted to take something unsuited for a purpose and make it suitable. By the time I’d finished it could hold off a Manx Norton at Brands Hatch.”