Contact jane.playdon@cisi.org if you are a CISI member with a hobby you think will interest other members. You will receive a £25 voucher as a ‘thank you’ if we publish your storyThere are few of us who could claim to have escaped a burning car, but Tim Boles, Chartered FCSI, managing director at Equilibrium Pensions on the Isle of Man, is one of the exceptions. Combine this with the fact that it is a risk he faces when taking part in his sport of choice, motor racing, and we can determine that here is a CISI member who likes to live fast and furiously.
Tim appears to have motor racing in his blood. He is related to Tony Rolt, the Formula 1 British racing driver, soldier and engineer who, at his death in 2008, was the longest surviving participant of the first ever World Championship Grand Prix at Silverstone in 1950.
Having grown up in the Highlands of Scotland, Tim first learnt to drive Jeeps on his father’s farm at the age of nine, on 14 miles of private road. He competed in the Welsh Hill Rally in a Jeep CJ two weeks after gaining a driving licence at age 17 in 1977.
He was educated at Eton, and joined Sedgwick in the City as part of a graduate fast track trainee programme in 1986 after completing business studies at Westminster University. In the 1980s Tim joined Gardner Mountain & Capel Cure Underwriting Agencies, being appointed a director and compliance officer in 1990. It was during this time that he founded Everitt Boles Motorsport Insurance Management, in addition to the Classic Camaro Club UK. For those of us unfamiliar with a Classic Camaro, it is a Chevrolet Camaro – an American automobile which first went on sale on September 29, 1966, for the 1967 model year and was designed as a competing model to the Ford Mustang.
Apart from the Jeep CJ, Tim’s entire motor racing career has been founded upon one car: ‘Butch’, the black 1968 Chevrolet Camaro which he has raced since 1990, in countries including South Africa, the US, and the UK Isle of Man.
Tim’s beloved Butch became an unlikely star after it appeared in Mad Max: Fury Road in 2015
He returned to motor racing in the 1990s, competing in the Aston Martin Owners Club events with wins at Brands Hatch in Kent; Croft Circuit in North Yorkshire; Castle Combe in Wiltshire; and the Manx Classic in the Isle of Man, which he won on three occasions.
But the biggest race he has ever entered, and won, was at Killarney in Cape Town, South Africa in 2009. Tim, aka ‘The Manxman’, raced against South African star Sarel van der Merwe, aka ‘Supervan’, with 10,000 spectators and 400 other competitors. In a fascinating YouTube clip of the race (‘Supervan vs The Manxman Wars’), Tim beats Sarel by 0.4 of a second.
Tim’s beloved Butch became an unlikely star after it appeared in Mad Max: Fury Road in 2015. He explains in an interview on Manx Radio: “I received this email out of the blue from a guy saying that they’d heard Butch’s exhaust and that he thought it sounded very good. He said he would like to tape record the car. So they set a date and three of them turned up. They put 15 microphones all around the car and began recording. They asked me to sign a waiver, indicating there would be a big fine if I told anyone about the recording before the film comes out.” The sound became the sound of the hero’s car in the movie, and the video game of the same name.
Tim loves racing as it “frees the mind of clutter and worries, as there is no room for anything else”. His tips to those thinking of taking up this hobby would be to “keep calm and focused and avoid overdriving. Overdriving leads to trouble as well as slow lap times and degraded tyres.” He’s been in dangerous situations on a couple of occasions, usually involving a spinning car suddenly appearing in front of him and having to make a split-second decision to avoid crashing. He’s also been in a Mercury Cougar when it was on fire and lived to tell the tale!
No doubt Mad Max fans out there will be watching keenly to spot Butch the Classic Chevrolet Camaro after reading this.
This article was originally published in the Q4 2018 print edition of The Review. The print edition is available to all members who opt in to receive it, except student members. All eligible members who would like to receive future editions in the post should log in to MyCISI, click on My Account/Communications and set their preference to 'Yes'.