Top Gear’s original ‘Stig’ liked what he saw at car tuning firm TopGear Tuning so much, he bought the company – and now ex-racer Perry McCarthy is revealing his plans for expansion.
The former F1 driver has just launched a new website for the ECU remapping firm based in Bridport, Dorset, with the aim of rapidly growing the number of dealers and garages its systems are offered in.
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To date, 20,000 cars have been remapped by the tuning firm, via 270 dealers nationwide. McCarthy wants to quickly ramp that up and hopes his profile and former career as The Stig will help the company gain traction.
“I was invited by the owner of Topgear Tuning, Steve Kilcoyne, to visit their head office,” he said. “Steve thought I may be interested in the process of ECU remapping and his team’s approach to it.
“I agreed but after arriving, what was scheduled as a one-hour meeting turned in to five hours… my initial curiosity quickly changed to recognising a great business opportunity within my home ground of the automotive industry.”
Why has The Stig bought a car tuning company?
McCarthy believes the remapping sector as a whole is a growth market in the UK – largely driven by consumers becoming more aware of the performance and economy gains claimed.
Performance improvements from remapping are well known, of course: it’s the economy improvements that’s a particularly interesting growth area, given the ongoing fuss over Europe’s outdated economy test cycle…
The B2B firm is now “offering independent and larger service centres the same opportunity to take commercial advantage of increased public awareness of remaps.
“With its experience, expertise and unique brand marketing, it can deliver, manage and support existing tuners or new entrants in to the remapping trade.”
Naturally, McCarthy can’t resist reminding us of his Top Gear days either. “If only some of those reasonably priced cars that we raced around the Top Gear track had been remapped, I’m sure the leader board would’ve looked very different.” Quite.