Reverend Adam Gompertz
Car designer turned man of the cloth Reverend Adam Gompertz finds spirituality behind the wheel, especially when roaring down a French mountainside in a classic MG.
“There are so many components of a road trip for me. What’s playing on the stereo? Where are you? Who are you with? What’s the context of the whole journey? ”
“I was fortunate to do the Monte Carlo classic rally back in 2019. I did it with the Blue Diamond Riley team, and they lent me a 1949 MG TC.
A few of us went up to the top of the Col du Turini mountain to take some pictures and then we were driving down towards Monaco where we were going to have a meal in Monte Carlo. For lots of reasons that was the culmination of the trip we'd achieved – getting to the top of the Col in a 1936 Riley and a 1949 MG. And so we started coming down, and I don't know if you've ever driven that road, but it's just wonderful.
In an old car, particularly, you feel far more connected, because you don't have the safety systems or the power steering even and the gearbox kind of feels like an old rifle bolt. Just brilliant. We’d been slicing through these hairpins being able to see for miles below so you knew nothing was coming.
There's the Riley and then me following with my passenger in the MG. We came around this really tight hairpin bend and suddenly the sun started to go down. The sky was a really vivid pinky red and I just jammed on the anchors and Craig Callum, who was my co driver, and I and we just sat there, and we watched the sun setting for five or ten minutes.
Neither of us said anything. You didn't have to say anything. It was just this amazing experience. And after 10 minutes, we made our way into Monaco. But it was the fact that actually we stopped. We didn't say anything. After all the fun of the rapid movement in trying to drift an old MG around corners, we suddenly had this quiet and we just sat there. For me it was a spiritual experiences.”
Photo John Wycherly
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