Mr Motorsport

At 83 years old and after a lifetime spent in motoring, one might expect the average person’s interest in all things automotive to start fading. But Roger McCleery is not an average person. He’s deeply interesting, highly intelligent and still as passionate about cars as ever.

- Gerhard Horn

A young intimidated motoring hack pitches up for one of his first-ever events, which happens to be a Fiat-Chrysler track day at the famed Kyalami circuit.

Not knowing anyone, he stands in the corner and waits for someone to tell him what to do. A friendly elderly gentleman walks his way and asks whether he’d like to accompany him around the track. “We’ll take the Fiat 500 Pop they have standing outside,” he said.

While hammering the little Fiat around the track, this friendly gentleman recalls how much speed Niki Lauda carried through the same corner back when he was racing in F1. He has a story for every corner, which ends up being more entertaining than even an Alfa Romeo 159 V6 at full chat.

“By the way, I’m Roger McCleery,” he says back in the pits. That is how I met Roger nearly a decade ago.

After so much time in the motoring industry, he has enough anecdotes to fill a book. Which he’s busy with at the moment. It lies on his desk, written by hand. It might just be the most interesting piece of motoring memorabilia in an office already filled with decades worth of motoring-related things.

Where did this love of motoring start?

I was born in 1935 in Ireland. My family was quite mad into motorbikes but I didn’t know that at the time. My dad found a job in South Africa and we came here just before the war. My dad went off to the war, where he was a gunnery and bomb instructor and I went off to boarding school.

And as a young man…

I left school in 1953 wanting to be a journalist but the intake at the Arhus was still six months away. Back then, us youngsters had three options: you either joined the oil companies, the banks or the insurance companies. I was young and wanted money, so I joined a bank.