BRISTOL MOTOR CLUB
Paul Parker, the club’ s company secretary, is one of those innovators in the club and was the person who brought AutoSOLO to the UK.“ Paul is an amazing man, he knows everyone and he can make things happen,” adds Laurence.“ It all started in Bristol – I participated in the second ever event myself – and it grew from there.
“ Paul ran the first event, and he was at pretty much every one of them through the 2000s. Now, with StreetCar, AutoSOLO has become a funnel into lots of clubs, which is great. We regularly get messages from the StreetCar team now about people who are interested and it’ s a good way of getting people in and getting them going.”
On Track
The next game-changing innovation to be introduced by the club was down to Laurence himself. Inspired by a trip to the Nürburgring, one of his friends wanted to get into motorsport and bought a Mazda MX-5, only to discover that under Association of South West Motor Club( ASWMC) rules it was not eligible to race in any series in the region.
Laurence discovered that several others had faced the same problem and, after trying and failing to get the rules changed, he spotted an opportunity to set up the club’ s MX-5 Challenge championship. He even put flyers on MX-5s he spotted in the streets to build entries, and it is now going from strength to strength.
“ The idea was to run multi-discipline,” he explains.“ It’ s designed so you can bring one car for the whole season and be competitive across all disciplines, with key principles being low cost and close competition.”
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Dave Greenslade drives‘ Rusty Shed’ in the Westonzoyland AutoSOLO
Revolution- March 2026
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