When he’s not at the helm of his Aston Martin specialist garage in Essex, Rikki Cann is tearing up the tracks in one of Newport Pagnell’s finest. Cann’s heavily modified Series 2 V8 Vantage has become a regular sight on circuits over its 15-year racing life and currently competes in Bernie’s V8s, the Classic Sports Car Club’s Special Saloons and Modsports series, and the Classic Touring Car Racing Club’s Historic Thunder championship.
Indeed, in one-time Caterham Graduates champion Sam Wilson’s hands, it topped the Historic Thunder standings in 2023, taking three overall wins and falling just one point short of winning Classic Thunder outright.
The shell started life as a 1979 Oscar India model, an update of Bill Towns’s original 1977 design that was recognised by Guinness World Records as the world’s fastest production car, capable of 170mph.
“It had a very, very large accident as a road car,” explains Cann. “The insurance company said it wasn’t worth repairing, so I took it off the insurance company and we turned it into a race car.”
It replaced an earlier DBS V8 that had met its demise at Brands Hatch with Cann’s younger brother Joe at the wheel.
“That was a heavy, heavy one on the front,” recalls the elder sibling, who in the meantime won the 2008 Aston Martin Owners’ Club Classic title aboard Phil Williams’s similar DBS V8. “So that’s still at work, and all the bits off that car went on to the one we’re talking about. So it’s called Rose because it’s all Second Hand Rose [Barbra Streisand’s 1965 hit].”
Wins followed in CSCC Future Classics and the car was also a frontrunner in AMOC Intermarque and Bernie’s V8s. But development in recent years, with the help of ace engineers Bob Buck and former racer Graham Hathaway, has taken it to another level.
With mapped ignition and electronic throttle bodies, the 5.3-litre V8 has been stretched to 5.7 litres, dry-sumped and mated to a four-speed Jerico gearbox. It runs a standard Jaguar rear axle and Salisbury limited-slip differential, and has gone from 15-inch to 18-inch wheels, which accommodate six-pot brakes.
“And the last two seasons we’ve been developing the aero on it, which has made quite a big difference to the handling,” adds Cann. “It involved a different splitter on the front, we’ve flat-bottomed some of the car, we’ve put a rear wing [from a Ford Escort RSR] on it if it’s in the Thunder championships, and it just transformed the car.
"When you actually look at the lap times – big engines, big bodies, small engines, small bodies – and they’re all about the same. It just works"
Rikki Cann
“It just turns in like a go-kart. We have to take it [the rear wing] off for Bernie’s V8s – we just have the rear lip round the boot instead, which works.”
Having entered it as a V8 Vantage X-Pack, which was Newport Pagnell’s highest-spec iteration of the model in the late 1980s, Cann admits, “It’s beyond X-Pack spec now, that’s for sure!”
In competition against far more modern machinery in Classic Thunder and silhouette specials in Special Saloons and Modsports, the Aston has taken overall wins in both categories over the past few years.
“The car is 1400kg,” reckons Cann, “and, when we go up against the Special Saloons, who are a great bunch of guys, I can’t live with them because they all weigh about 700kg! They come whizzing past me under braking as I’m trying to stop this tank. But it’s amazing how when you actually look at the lap times – big engines, big bodies, small engines, small bodies – and they’re all about the same. It just works.”
It’s a far cry from racing Ford Anglia Hot Rods at venues such as Harringay in the 1970s, then rallying a Lotus Cortina and Rover P4 in the 1980s. Cann followed his father Arthur and cousin Brian into racing on London’s short ovals and developed his love for hand-built Astons nearby.
“I worked in a garage in Walthamstow as a youngster,” he recounts, “and my boss there had an Aston. I used to love working on it because you get a bit bored with mundane servicing of Jags and whatever there was at the time. I loved working on the Aston – he had a DB6 – because nothing fitted and nothing was straightforward. It was more of a challenge and I enjoyed that. Then I got offered a job at Hyde Vale Garage, which was the main service dealer in South London.”
Hyde Vale’s closure prompted Cann to set up on his own. “The first time we opened was the first day of the first Gulf War, and not a job came in for three months,” he remembers. But, over 30 years later, the firm is still going strong and Rose is the latest of a line of racing Astons prepared in Shoeburyness. Cann has even contested the Land’s End to John O’Groats reliability trial (LeJog) in a DB2/4 and co-driven Bob White’s DBS V8 on the Targa Tasmania, against the likes of the late Peter Brock.
“He was in what you and I would call a Vauxhall Viva, him and his son, Jamie,” recalls Cann. “And he crashed in the end, so we actually beat him.”
Cann’s V8 Vantage hasn’t travelled down under but has competed at Spa among more than 100 outings and remains a draw, as evidenced by its popularity at the USA Snetterton 300 event in September.
“I had posters made of it, give them away to sign,” says Cann. “It was like hot bread at the bakers, going out the door straight away.”
Damage suffered there ended Rose’s season early but has already been repaired, allowing focus to switch to the next raft of developments.
“This year we’re going to be doing a little bit more work on the induction and exhaust side,” reveals Cann. “And a little bit more aero. We’re forever developing it. And every year you think, ‘How can you find another half a second round Brands?’ But you do.”
