The syndicate

Roger Cowman is used to the scream of Formula One cars – he runs the EuroBOSS series which provides an arena for recent (pre-1998) GP cars to compete. But as co-owner of the Toleman TG184, he has no plans to enter Senna’s Monaco car.

“We’re a syndicate of four co-owners,” he says, “and the only time we’ve run the car was at Goodwood Festival of Speed three years ago. The car is so original that it would be a shame to race it. Apart from putting it back into the early-season colours it ran in at Monaco. we’ve done nothing to it.

“At the end of 1984, the team couldn’t afford to pay all of Johansson’s fee, so he got the car instead. As far as I know he never drove it again, and we bought it from his family 10 years ago.

“We didn’t even know if it was a real engine or a show unit. We took the plugs out to turn it over – and it fired up! We hadn’t realised that there were four more plugs on the side of the block. Since then we’ve remapped it to run on super-unleaded instead of the funny stuff they used in ’84, but we’ve done nothing else to it.”