John has more than 22 years’ experience organising rallies round the world. He has a long history of innovation in the classic rally world with a number of firsts to his name. These include the first to organise a rally through Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam, the first to rally through Bhutan, the first to rally round Madagascar, Sri Lanka and the Amazon.

He set up Bespoke Rallies as a formal entity in 2012, but he had already organised events such as The Himalaya Classic Rally (2006, 2007 and 2009 which was the first rally ever to drive through Bhutan), The Tiger Classic Rally in SE Asia (2008 and 2011 and 2013), The Maya Classic Rally (2010) and the Cuba Classic Rally (2011). Since forming Bespoke Rallies events have included The Royal Rajasthan Rally, The Trans-Himalaya Rally, two Tiger rallies, three Maya Classic Rallies starting on Panama and finishing in New Orleans, The PanAm rally across the USA, The White Nights rally around Scandinavia and of course the Grand Prix of South America. Latterly he has created a series of three day competitive events and developed his own Virtual Marshal software to create a real time in car system to replace roadside marshals.

A serial logistics man he was also the creator and manager of the last Rover Mini Works Rally Team (1994 to 1997) which had Paddy Hopkirk as the No 1 driver. They competed on the Monet Carlo Rally three times, the UK Rally GB and raced at the Nurburgring.

He started his motoring life on the top motorspost magazine Cars & Car Conversions before being recruited by Philip Young to be Deputy Editor of Collector’s Car, where his love affair with classic cars began. He helped set up British Motor Heritage which remanufactures parts for classic BMC vehicles, including the MGB, MG Midget, TR6 and classic Mini. He was also on the team for the creation of the Heritage Motor Centre in Gaydon – now called the British Motor Museum. He also worked for Caterham Cars for many years helping with their marketing.

Throughout this time he continued racing saloon cars, then moved to classic rallying with his own highly successful Mini Copper S, competing in the European Historic Rally Championship for many years. Later with his Mini works team he competed in the Nurburgring 24 Hour Race on three occasions. He also competed in the first two Festival of Speed events at Goodwood in his own Mini, being entered by John Copper as his ‘Works’ driver.

All that experience has come together in Bespoke Rallies where he says, “My aim is to create innovative and exciting events to take people where they wouldn’t normally think of going. The adventure starts with Bespoke Rallies.”