At the time of writing, I have lived in America for around three-fifths of my life. It’s the best part of thirty years since I lived in England. Truth be told, Sheffield and Los Angeles are worlds apart, but I am the sum of those two amazing places. That goes back to what I said before about never forgetting your roots. Take where you live now along with who you are and mix that with where you have come from – that is what makes you unique.
I say this all the time, but when I went to America, that represented ultimate freedom to me. In the simplest terms, my dad wasn’t going to tell me to cut my hair and get a job any more, but there was also a wider sense of freedom, a feeling that anything was possible. LA gave me that sense of limitless opportunity, there didn’t seem to be any boundaries, I could do whatever I wanted. There’s an almost chameleon-like freedom to involve yourself in different ideas. I strongly believe that is why I’ve been able to enjoy success in three different areas with no educational background in any of them. Yes, for sure, the first few years in LA were a struggle, but at the time it didn’t really feel like that. Don’t get me wrong, I had my low moments and I’ve shared those with you, but overall I was just enjoying living in the US, making my own way, then when the clothing took off, it really did suddenly feel like I could achieve anything.
Would I have ended up with the fashion business, with the property, location shoots and all the cars if I’d stayed in Sheffield? Let’s be honest, no, I wouldn’t. I could have made my jeans tight and put patches on denim jackets in Sheffield, but where would the opportunity have been to sell them? I might have started a market stall there, but realistically where would that have gone? There were thrift stores, and my cousin Oliver and I used to love going to Army Surplus and buying combat boots and military M1 jackets and stuff like that, but I never saw that as a business, even with the market-trader mentality in the family. Manchester might have been a better idea. Or obviously London, but that is a big, expensive city. I had a buddy who had gone to university down there and just always seemed to struggle because London is so expensive. With LA, yes, that’s a big city too, but I felt there was an underbelly, an alternative way of getting by that was much more affordable.
In my experience, there’s more opportunity, or there appears to be more opportunity, in America. The reality is that in America I’ve never worked for anyone else. Okay, there were a couple of odd jobs when I first got here thirty years ago, but ever since starting the clothing on the boardwalk in the late eighties, there’s been no boss for me to answer to.
LA is the land of opportunity. You know, whatever you want to do, it can be done here. You want to be a pro-skateboarder, bike guy, rock star, musician, guitar manufacturer, sound engineer, screenwriter, movie star, astronaut, design cars or work in the aerospace industry? … It’s all here. Self-starting is encouraged, it’s applauded and championed. For me, it felt pretty easy to start something out of nothing on the boardwalk in Venice. Of course, it pays not to be too idealistic about this – not everyone who comes to LA makes it and achieves their dreams – but, in my opinion, the opportunity is there.
However, no one is going to do it for you. All of those things are here, but they are not giving those jobs out when you arrive at Union Station at 6 a.m. on a Trailways bus. There’s no Willy Wonka golden ticket to fame and fortune. For me, there was a very hard bench to lie on and a kick up the ass to move on by that security guard pretty soon after. But outside the station doors, there was opportunity waiting for me.
LA itself is kind of easy living, the weather’s great, and, hell, you can drive 365 days of the year. I have buddies in Europe that tell me, ‘Yeah, we’re putting our cars away for winter’, and I can’t imagine that. Half of my cars don’t even have heaters that work. Some of them have no windscreen wipers because it rains so infrequently. If you want to surf in the morning, hike up mountains in the afternoon and ski in the evening, you can do it in California. I’ve done road trips like that in 277; it’s spectacular.
I was once invited to appear in a Steve McQueen documentary, and Gary Oldman was shooting his segment when we got there. Turns out Oldman is a Porsche guy, and we kind of clicked briefly; I told him I used to go to an Indian restaurant nearby where we saw him once. I don’t think I would have run into Gary Oldman at an Indian restaurant when I was a kid. But then again, I do remember seeing Phil Oakey at a chip shop in Sheffield.
California also has these spectacular world-class driving roads, generally wide and flowing. I’m used to these spirited drives. Obviously, I’m strongly associated with the 6th Street Bridge which was near to Willow and has seen some of my more fierce drives in its time. That bridge always allowed me to put pedal to the metal and get a surge of adrenaline so close to home. Sadly, the bridge has now been demolished, as it suffered from what is known as ‘concrete cancer’ and had become unsafe. To mark this moment, I held an outlaw gathering by way of saying farewell to the bridge, and we had over two hundred cars turn up, which was just fantastic.
Another one of my absolute favourite drives is along Angeles Crest Highway, just eighteen miles from the warehouse, partly because there is literally no one out there. When I was in the UK for the brilliant Goodwood Revival, I remember driving to Sheffield from Goodwood on a Sunday afternoon and there’s all these controlled speed limits along stretches of the motorway, I’m like, Controlled speed limit, what the fuck is that? Then it went down to two lanes for thirty miles even though there was no work being done in the coned-off lane at all; there weren’t even any workmen having a brew. Then there was a sign saying ‘Speed Camera’ and I’m like, Speed cameras, what the fuck are those? I know full well England has got some fantastic roads – the snake from Sheffield over the Pennines into Glossop is a spectacular road – but that three-hundred-mile route from Goodwood to Sheffield that day was not a good drive.
There is a real diversity of people here in LA, which I enjoy. It’s a real melting pot. There’s obviously a big Mexican population with all their amazing culture and flavour, there are Australians, Japanese, Malaysians, Indonesians, Brits – the list is endless. It’s almost like no one in Los Angeles is actually from LA, and that’s a good characteristic. I find that hugely inspiring creatively, because wherever you go there are little traces of ideas you can pick up, whether it’s some street art or a museum or architecture or food or music. In LA, it doesn’t matter what you look like or whether you have a strange accent. I had what a Brit would call a typically working-class upbringing. Although we didn’t really travel around the UK much at all, I was aware of the divide, the separation between north and south, that whole ridiculous idea that you’re a northern monkey, you must be thick if you live ‘up north’. I used to think, Well, loads of the bright people in London weren’t born in London! When I arrived in LA, there was no class divide, no preconceptions passed down over generations about what certain people can achieve, these engrained ideas of society and your place in it – that just simply didn’t exist here. I still sense a Wild West spirit, and I kind of like that. Almost a feeling of reckless abandonment.
However, let me be very clear – all these comments are not me saying Sheffield is inferior to LA. Not at all. It’s just very different. And being brought up in Sheffield in the seventies and eighties has given me a character and personality that has actually been completely instrumental in what I have been trying to achieve. Growing up in Sheffield might struggle compared to LA in the areas I mentioned, but – and it’s a big but – that UK town and living in the north of England has given me so much that I am very grateful for. Being brought up in the seventies and eighties in England has given me grit and determination to work hard, that British Bulldog spirit of never give up, that tenaciousness that my mum had and that I inherited, too. People from those parts find a way to get stuff done. I think my early stamina from running has also stood me in good stead, even now, some forty years later. Coming back full circle to the days when I was a kid loving cross-country, well, in 2016 I was asked to do a public service announcement for the LA Olympic bid in 2024. Basically, they were talking to various celebrities and high-profile people about LA, what the city meant to them and how amazing it would be to host the Olympic Games. I told the story of watching Sebastian Coe win the 1,500 metres and 800 metres at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympic Games.
Brits also have a great sense of humour, as well as the gift of the gab, and that’s something that’s made me not afraid to talk to people. Sheffield is an innovative town with a rich history of pioneering, especially in industry. I believe that the entrepreneurial spirit in me was already there when I arrived in the States. The Sheffield boy in me has kept me grounded, made me work hard and dedicate myself to achieving my dreams and grafting non-stop.
Of course, getting back to California, LA is the perfect place to live if you enjoy driving, particularly the cars that I collect. One of my favourite parts of living in LA is when we finish a car and I always take it for a three-hundred-mile shakedown test drive. So, for example, I might drive through the Angeles Crest Highway out to Willow Springs, then through the Tehachapi and back to California City, Mojave and finally into LA. What a ride … only in LA!
The Downtown arts district of LA is where I’ve been for almost twenty-five years now, and that’s where I am rooted. So all my adventures begin in this gritty, urban part of Los Angeles. However, this is not where I was born – the industrial city of Sheffield in the north of England was my hometown growing up. It is between these two very urban places that my story has unfolded. In many ways, that tale reflects how those two cities have influenced me, and as a result I am a combination of various elements of both. And despite the apparent differences between Sheffield and Los Angeles, there is a real common thread between the cities that have been my life. I’m a city guy at heart; I didn’t grow up in a rural environment on a farm in the middle of nowhere. I feel most at home in an urban environment – the buildings, the architecture, the grittiness – so it’s no coincidence that a lad brought up in Steel City ended up buying a hundred-and-fifteen-year-old two-storey brick building in LA that would not look out of place in Sheffield.
People often ask me why I collect vintage Porsches. I always think, Why wouldn’t you collect them? There is so much to be attracted to. Aside from what I said about Porches excelling at everything, these older examples are so enjoyable to be around. These cars are forty to fifty years old, so they’ve all been tweaked and changed. They’ve all got patina and DNA and character and soul, but what does that mean? Well, like I said at the very start of this book, it’s blood, sweat, tears, oil and gas – you know it’s encrusted and engrained in the car. These are living, driving machines with personality that you are connected to and involved with. Yeah, the modern cars may be technically faster, but they are less involving; you don’t have to put as much effort in. Yes, ultimately it’s just a car that goes from A to B, but that’s not the purpose of it, that totally misses the point. Like living in Sheffield and LA, it is all about the experience.