In a workshop in deepest Oxfordshire, a Subaru BRZ is being restored to life.
It’s a write-off – a Category N, which means it has sustained non-structural damage and can be repaired and returned to the road. So far, so ordinary, except the people putting this Subaru back on the road are veterans of the armed services with the scars – some physical, some mental – to prove it.
They are beneficiaries of Mission Motorsport, a services charity that through motorsport helps those veterans who, in its words, are “hardest to reach” to build fresh careers beyond the military. Since it was founded in 2012, more than 2000 people have found work through its programmes.
Its motto is ‘Race, retrain, recover’ – words that, in the case of the Scoobie before me and the guys working on it, couldn’t be more apposite.
It has been donated by eBay, along with the parts required to return to its original factory specification. They are all used components, reclaimed and verified under eBay’s Certified Recycled scheme.
From eBay’s perspective, giving Mission a car and the parts needed to put it back on the road is a good plug for its scheme but it’s very generous too. The fact is the charity struggles for donations and this crashed BRZ and its bits are a gift in more senses than one.
For a start, the car’s an automatic, which means that, with push-pull hand controls and an extra brake on the passenger side fitted to it, it can be driven by disabled veterans.
Later, it will be turned into a road-legal race car, again with eBay’s help. Its maiden track outing will be the charity’s Race of Remembrance (this weekend, 7-10 November), an endurance vent at Anglesey Circuit. A better demonstration of Mission’s motto is hard to imagine.
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