Gordon King
Gordon King has a garage most of us can only dream about. For $25, he'll take you for a very fast spin in his Lotus Exige 260 during the Savannah Speed Classic.
Growing up in South Africa, all Gordon King ever wanted to do was drive race cars.
He took his first ride in one (a Hudson Terra Plane) at age five and grew up immersed in road-course racing. His father, an executive for British Petroleum, played host to many of Europe’s top Grand Prix drivers, many of whom stayed at the family’s home in Cape Town. “The drivers would come down on holiday to drink all our beer and chase pretty girls,” King says, laughing.
Their joie de vivre only served to fuel his interest in racing, and in his early 20s, King bought a Renault R-8 Alconi and made a run at becoming a professional driver. When a wreck took his car out of commission and he couldn’t afford a replacement, he decided to pursue a business career instead.
He ultimately settled in Charleston, where he built a successful disaster supplies and logistics company, PropacUSA, Inc. The lucrative business afforded him the opportunity to re-ignite his passion for cars and racing. Today, he’s an avid sports car collector and sought-after driving instructor who frequently visits East Coast tracks to train the members of Porsche, Ferrari, BMW and Audi car clubs on the finer points of road-course racing.
When he’s not on the road, King can usually be found in his 4,000-square foot, air-conditioned garage tending to a jaw-dropping fleet of more a dozen race-ready rides, including a 1963 Jaguar E Type, a 2006 Ford GT, a 2000 BMW Z8 and a 2008 Ford Shelby GT KR500 limited edition Mustang.
During the 2011 Savannah Speed Classic, he will be offering hot laps in his ardent-red Lotus Exige 260. Only 23 of these British speed demons were produced for the U.S. market, and while it’s street legal (“Barely,” King says with a grin) the six-speed transmission, AP racing brakes and harness restraints reveal the car’s true personality. The Exige rockets from zero to 60 in four seconds, and it handles like a dream on the twists and turns of the Hutchinson Island course, King says.
“It’s the perfect car especially for that track,” he says. “It’s light, nimble and in terms of just raw handling it probably pulls more Gs than any other car.”
The Lotus has a top speed of 140 mph. King says he’ll probably keep it under 120 mph on the hot laps, but when the supercharged engine is screaming at 8,500 rpm right behind the passenger compartment, “it sounds even faster.”
“Most of the time they have a look of absolute terror on their faces,” King says of his hot lap passengers. “The idea is not to scare anyone, but to open their eyes a little bit. People have no idea what these cars can do. It’s nice to be able to show off the performance aspects.”