Nostalgic racer: Why one Scarborough local is keeping the memory of 90s car culture alive.
Motorsport has been at the heart of this country for decades but, for many, the 90s era can’t be matched. This has led to an increase in the popularity of cars from the time. Jack Britton, from Scarborough, is one of these 90s motorsport superfans, with his Nissan Primera being his pride and joy.
Mr Britton was recently featured in the short film, ‘Cars That Made The 90s: Part 6 - Motorsport‘ by Influx, which has over 240K views. In this, he discussed his love for that era of racing.
“There was always the old saying of ‘race it on Sunday, drive it to work on Monday,” he told the audience.
“If you owned a Nissan Primera and then you went on a weekend and saw two of them racing, you felt like part of it all.”
“I think if you’ve got a 90s saloon car, it needs to be full livery, full race car, you know, it’s the best they ever looked.”
Despite having a passion for '90s motorsport, Mr Britton is actually too young to remember it all - but he is making up for that.
“I wasn’t around when all the 90s racing was going on. I’ve sort of been exposed to it 20, 30 years later by video and by the sort of people rebuilding these cars 30 years later and bringing them back out and racing,” he revealed.
“Everyone who used to go watch it, when they were a kid, they’re all, you know, getting on 30,40, 50 now and they’re just getting to relive their childhood again.”
His well-loved Primera is an impressive representation of 90s car culture and, for Mr Britton, other models just can’t compete.
“The Primera dominated most of 98 and definitely all of 99, mopping up races constantly and even later in life, 2001, 2002, Swedish Touring cars, all these touring cars were back out racing again and they just dominated the field again,” he said.
The photographer and automotive expert spent a lot of time and energy restoring his vintage vehicle.
“I think if you’re going to spend the time and definitely the money to even get close to recreating it, you may as well go the whole way. You may as well make it as accurate as you can,” he added.
“I mean, we were months on end scouring through old 90s photos - blurry photos, pixelated photos - trying to measure up the right size of everything, just to get them all perfect and yeah, it’s really paid off.”
As he continues to enjoy his retro ride, Mr Britton remains fond of the cars and community that came from that time.
“The engineering behind it (90s motorsport cars) - it hit the spot, you know, the cars weren’t too over complicated. It was just the perfect amount of madness that made them so fast.”