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Toon In Tune?
Posted by Mike on 23 January, 2008
Image courtesy of Racing Sports Cars
Following the surprise (re)appointment of Kevin Keegan as Newcastle United boss last week (and the fact that we seem to get a lot of people searching for Newcastle on the site), I’ve been looking into NUFC’s brief foray into the world of motor racing back in the late 1990s.
Following two disappointing Le Mans efforts (with the Storm road car in 1993 and the Storm GT in 95), Lister built a third version of the the Storm, the Lister Storm GTL, for the 1997 24 Hours of Le Mans.
Backed by Adidas and Newcastle United Football Club from 1996-98, the GTL was classified in the GT1 class – the fastest class of the mid 1990s – and widely considered, at the time, to be a new breed of supercar.
The Storm GTL ran on a 7.0 litre Jaguar V-12 power plant and was driven by Tiff Needell (images here) in 1996, followed by Julian Bailey and Anthony Reid.
Bearing in mind that English Premier League clubs don’t tend to ‘extend their brand’ (yuk) away from football (unlike their European counterparts), it just goes to show that football clubs and motor racing can successfully combine to appeal to the fans… especially when you consider how popular the car was with the passionate ‘Toon Army’ at the time.
Any Geordies out there that remember their club’s venture into the world of motor racing?
