Discovery leads to fast cat hobby

Self-employed paint stripper Pete said three years ago he had been visiting his friend Terry when he told him he had the classic V5 car "round the back".

Pete, who said he had been been "doing stupid cars " since he was seventeen, and drag racing for the past eleven years, took one look at the Cougar and decided to revamp it into the racing beast it is today.

He bought the car and said he knew he wanted to turn it into a lean mean racing machine, but hadn't really thought about how much work it would entail. The car had been left outside with the windows open for around four years and was something of a wreck, but luckily Terry was on hand to help.

Pete said: "Terry was there all the way throughout the project, but I think we were both surprised by what we ended up with once we'd cut out all the bad stuff."

Initially, to lighten the load in anticipation of turning the Cougar into a racing car, the pair completely stripped out the floor and all the interior metal, so that all that was left on the stands (skeleton) was the rear three-quarter panels, rear panel, A-pillars, and roof.

The pair then used their joint expertise to re-vamp the big cat in Pete's workshop. This included taking a year for a full chassis to be built, buying parts from the states, giving it a stunning new 'Toyota pearl blue' paint job and a 7.3 litre engine.

Within just fourteen months the project was completed and ready for it's first race at Santa Pod in 2008 where they reached a speed of 136 mph in 10 seconds.

Since then the pair have re-built a new eight hundred horsepower, 8.5 litre engine which can reach a top speed of 145mph in just under 9 seconds.

Pete said he doesn't want to race the car competitively, preferring to keeping the car as a hobby:

"Once you start entering competitions everything steps up. As it is it's good fun and to step up would ruin a nice hobby."