No rush. There was no rush. Why would there be? Korea had signed off on it, and now it had found its way home, D934 SVW wasn’t going anywhere.
There would be plenty of time to get across the Irish Sea and spend a day with the Ford Sierra RS Cosworth which had stolen Craig Breen’s heart in 1992. Not that he remembered Frank Meagher’s win on the Circuit of Ireland.
“I was just gone two,” he said. “I don’t remember it, but I learned about it.”
He certainly did.
And when the Sierra was found and available almost three decades down the line, it was only heading in one direction. Boreham built, it was originally run by Mike Little for Russell Brookes. Northern Irish star Stephen Finlay used it for a season before Meagher took it in 1991, winning the Circuit the following year.
It was that seven-minute win that cemented Meagher as Craig’s number one hero.
“He was just such an everyday kind of a fella,” said Breen. “He wasn’t the superstar or anything like that, but he was some sort of talent. He was always struggling to make it all work and he was up against some big, big names like Austin [MacHale], Bertie Fisher and the like, but he was always there.
“I loved his spirit.”
Meagher died while testing a rally car in Ireland in 2002. Breen was 12.
“I don’t know what it was with Frank. It was just something, something that just made the connection.
“When the Sierra came, we just had to do it. It took two years to get it right – and we had to get it right. The livery had to be from the Circuit in 1992 and everything had to be just as it was when he drove it.
“OK, we have given the dampers a new lease of life, just to make her a bit more fun, but otherwise it’s as it was.
“I can’t thank Tom [Gahan] for all the work he did on the car. He knows what Frank and the car mean to me and he’s made a boyhood dream come to life.”
And in Ireland late last year, the dream was so close to being delivered as Breen and Paul Nagle came within an ace of winning the Killarney Historic Rally – only a broken driveshaft on the final stage kept them off the top step of the podium.
Craig’s reaction? No bother. There’s always next year.
The sight and the sound of D934 SVW being powered across Molls Gap last December became all the more cherished on Thursday.
