Melbourne businessman Scott Pedder rolled his eyes and laughed out loud as he paused to consider how much money he has burned through competing in top-level rally driving down through the years.
"I could have bought a suburb, maybe Toorak," he said.
But he also conceded that he's one of the fortunate ones in that his national business empire is of sufficient size and profitability to financially prop up his motor sport passion.
In Canberra this weekend to compete in the forests against the hometown heroes from Hume, siblings Harry and Lewis Bates, Pedder relished the chance to turn off the company laptop and switch into competition mode.
During the week, he and his brother Mark run a hugely successful business which has 130 suspension franchises around the country and exports products to 26 countries. Around 85 per cent of the caravans on Australian roads have Pedders-made suspension under them.
The company's factory in Keysborough, Victoria, also manufactures all the coil springs used in V8 Supercar racing.
Added to that, he has four children at home ranging in age from 13 to 20.
"Yes, it's a busy life, but I like it that way," he said.
Yet as demanding as his business and family life has become, this year he has decided to return to compete at the elite level of the sport he loves - a huge commitment physically, emotionally and financially - and to which his parents introduced to him decades ago.
"There's a picture at home of me when I think I was a two-week-old baby at the rally in Canberra," he said.
"Once you get it, you can't shake this obsession with rallying; it's like an itch you have to scratch."
At 48 and with more than 30 years in the sport - his highest achievement as national rally champion in 2013 - Pedder admits he doesn't have the raw speed or sharp edge of his younger rivals - "but experience has its benefits".
"You learn to read roads better and so many little things which gain you a little bit here and little bit there," he said.
"I'm convinced this [car rallying] is the most intense motor sport that anyone can do because it's just you, your car and your co-driver against the clock; it's chasing that perfect performance that you know you're never going to achieve but you keep on chasing it anyway."
And sometimes that chase results in significant physical and financial pain.
In 2010 he was locked in a fierce split-second battle in South Australia with Victorian rival Simon Evans when he fired off the gravel road in fifth gear "doing north of 140kmh".
He slammed into a tree and broke both kneecaps and his right ankle in the crash. It took him three years to fully recover.
But the rally passion didn't end. Far from it.
"In my first event back, I had the fastest time of anyone, straight up," he said proudly.
With rain predicted for Canberra's opening round of the national rally season this weekend, the tricky conditions may well play into the experienced Pedder's hands in his Skoda R5 rally car
"Every national rally last year was a dry event," he said.
"So there will be some drivers who just won't know what happens when it's wet and the roads go greasy. But I've seen my share over the years."
