1968 − 1984 Colin: the Busy Baby by Margaret Mcrae
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1968 − 1984 Colin: the busy baby by Margaret McRae Colin Steele McRae was born on August 5, 1968. It was a Monday. He was born in the William Smellie Maternity Hospital in Lanark. And he was a much-wanted child – a first grandchild for my parents, however Jim’s mum and dad already had two. It’s from Jim’s mum that Colin took the name Steele – it was her maiden name. We were living in Blackwood, about five miles from Lanark, in those days. And it was to the house in Vere Road, Blackwood that we would have taken Colin home – if we hadn’t still been renovating the cottage at the time. Instead, we went and stayed with my parents for two or three weeks while we finished the work on the house. This was actually quite a God-send as my dad wasn’t feeling too well at the time and having a newborn baby in the house really took his mind off things. He spent all of his time, just focused on the baby. Right from the off, Colin was a busy baby and, unfortunately for us, not a baby to whom sleep came easily or quickly. I think he stayed in our room for about seven weeks, before we knew the time had come for him to go into his own room. I don’t think Colin really slept through the night completely for about two years. Alister, his younger brother, was something of a revelation by comparison and slept really quickly. It’s fair to say, Colin wasn’t an easy baby. He just didn’t seem to need to sleep. Particularly not when there were so many more interesting things going on elsewhere… And once Colin could walk, which he did pretty quickly, he wanted to go on adventures. He wanted to find out what was out there. As a toddler, to be quite honest, he was a nightmare. Jim’s parents had a dog, a boxer. He was a real softie. One day, we were up at their picture of him, standing there in the garden, in the middle of his big house and Colin was outside with the dog. I heard somebody say: adventure with this huge pair of binoculars hanging around his neck. “What on earth’s he doing with the dog?” But at the time, I remember thinking: “What the heck do I do with this child?” Turns out, Colin had found himself a steel welding rod and was trying to put it in the dog’s ear. Asked why, his reason was simple: Cars were always Colin’s thing. Always. Even when he was just two “To see if it would come out the other side.” years old, Jim had gone away to pick up two aunts from Stirling and when he got home, Colin was straight onto his Dad’s lap to steer the Alister arrived when Colin was two years and three months and car into the garage. Aunt Belle talked about that for years! The car they bonded straightaway. Colin was never the kind of toddler to be was a good place for Colin. He would sit for hours and hours in the jealous of the attention his brother would be getting, he just wanted car just pretending to steer and change gear. Obviously, the keys to to help. Or at least I think he wanted to help… the car were nowhere near! While Alister was still finding his feet, Colin had most definitely found When it came to school, Colin had nothing like the same his. There was an explorer in Colin just waiting to come out. At the enthusiasm; school didn’t come on wheels, for a start! Colin never bottom of our driveway, we had big double gates, which were tied liked school. We didn’t realise at the time, but he was suffering in the middle, to stop Colin from escaping. Not long after Alister had from Glue Ear, which is something easily put right these days, but it arrived, I remember working away in the house and listening to the wasn’t picked up so soon when he was young. He didn’t hear things noises a mother always hears when young children are outside. I very well and, because of that, his pronunciation of words wasn’t was suddenly aware the noise had stopped. I went out and found quite right. Potatoes were ‘potatals’ and windows ‘windals’. I’m sure Colin’s tricycle parked up against the gates. But no Colin. He’d used this had an impact on his schooling, but in short, Colin just didn’t his trike to climb up and over the gates. He was away. The first place like subjects like maths and English. He liked technical drawing and I looked was his cousin’s house, where we would go quite often. He woodwork, the kind of things he could apply some engineering to. wasn’t there. Then I saw him, over the road in a play park. I was so angry. But at the same time, I was so relieved. I could see exactly the same with Johnny. He was definitely a chip off the old block. He was always one for anything with wheels: two He did the same again a little while later when we were around at or four, it didn’t matter. And he had the same opinion of school as a friend’s house for lunch. All the children were called in, but no his daddy when he first went! While Colin didn’t enjoy school, he did Colin. My parent’s house was close by, so that was the first place I make a lot of very good friends who stayed with him throughout his headed. And there he was, standing in the front garden of the house, life. But, it’s fair to say, when he walked out of that school gate aged crying his eyes out because they weren’t in. I only wished I’d taken a 16, he was pretty delighted to do so. 14 RAC Rally November 24–27, 1991 Subaru Legacy RS Retired This was the first rally where we used the Prodrive-prepared engine in the Subaru. It was born out of the frustrations of cultural differences between the engineers in Japan [Subaru Tecnica International, STI] and England [Prodrive]. The Japanese came into rallying thinking that you could take a production car and modify only what was necessary to allow it to become a rally car. Prodrive instead followed the rulebook, which stated which standard parts you had to keep on the car, everything else being free for us to change. The Japanese were very conservative and insisted that we had to prove that any standard component didn’t work for rallying before they would allow us to change it. Back in those days Prodrive was not allowed to work on the engine and we had no access to the data or software. We decided to show Japan just what we could do with the engine, and the difference was night and day. I reckon that the best engine we ever had from Japan had about 280bhp, whereas the first Prodrive engine had about 320bhp. Mr Kuze [President of STI] allowed us to use the engine on the RAC and Colin was leading the rally before he rolled in Grizedale. David Lapworth Colin turned his domestic success international and led the 1991 RAC… … until he rolled the Legacy, caught out by a right-hander after a Grizedale crest. 43 Corporate Colin. And what about those socks… » Memories of Colin During the British Championship years I got to know Colin reasonably well and I think we developed some mutual respect. I realised that he had to have a certain amount of freedom and a long lead at times, yet there were times when we both knew that he needed a firm dictate. Jimmy was a great person for steering Colin in a certain way, but it is always difficult for a father to make the ultimate tough decisions. There were occasions when things went wrong for Colin and the red-mist came down, then we had to have some very tough words. It was also about survival for Prodrive, because we were getting to the point where we couldn’t afford the accidents anymore. We were a small operation with modest budgets and I could turn the tap off at any time for Colin. David Richards 51 Rally Malaysia August 21–23, 1993 Subaru Legacy RS First We enjoyed Malaysia; all the boys had a good time, mostly spent in the Hard Rock Café. The rally organisation, on the other hand, was shocking and a lot of the stages were held at night in horrible, slippery oil palm plantations. On the penultimate night we were leading comfortably when we went off the road at high speed into one of the many palm trees. The front of the car was completely destroyed but somehow Colin managed to get the car out of the stage and back to service. It was a real wreck; there was damage to the radiator, oil cooler, intercooler and the engine and gearbox had moved sideways in the car. The mechanics set to work in the dark and eventually they got the engine to run. The gear selector was jammed against the transmission tunnel and one mechanic smashed the tunnel with a sledgehammer to dislodge it. When he did free it, the car jumped into gear and ran over a couple of mechanics, fortunately not injuring them.