He can spin a car into a parking space just 33cm wider than the vehicle. He’s taught grannies how to do donuts, and started the craze for stunt driving with his famous Montego advert in 1988. But is he Top Gear's The Stig?
We sent Keith Collantine to find out how you get started as a stunt driver, why modern cars are hard to do stunts with, and put YOUR questions to Russ Swift.
In a corporate car park, a car pulls a series of break-neck stunts, culminating in a handbrake turn, and an eye-popping piece of parallel parking.
An anonymous actor climbs out of the car and wins the applause of his on-screen co-workers. But the real talent behind the wheel was Russ Swift, stunt driver extraordinaire.
Today Russ specialises in live action shows. He gets through a lot of tyres, so I meet up with him at the Autosport show at the stand of his sponsor Pirelli, where eagerly takes me back to how it all began: “The Montego advert launched me internationally,” he begins.
“We had put on a display at the 1987 British Grand Prix. Rover’s advertising agency saw me doing all these tricks and thought it would be great to have all of those in a TV commercial. I was given a free hand and put all my best tricks in it. It won the ‘best car commercial in the world’ award that year, and it was shown at the Cannes Film Festival.”
The memory of a sixty second video of car stunts being shown at a high-brow film festival raises a cheerful grin from Russ. That success spurred him on to where he is today: “We’ve just done the Melbourne and Singapore motor shows, the German Grand Prix and the Bahrain Grand Prix.”
“I always like to be one step ahead of everybody else when we create a new show. Everyone can do handbrake turns and donuts, but we choreograph and tie it all together.”
Although his stunts seem wild and outlandish, Russ places control and professionalism at the centre of what he does. That approach has left him with at least one unlikely boast for someone who has “professional stunt driver” on his CV. “I’ve never written a car off,” he tells me.
Not by accident at least. Deliberately? Well, that’s a different matter. He tells me of the stunt he performed for the latest Jeremy Clarkson DVD: “We had to destroy a Mini by tearing the doors off against walls and tearing the bumpers away – all while driving the car.
“We only had one chance to get it right or the car would be ruined. I get a lot of satisfaction out of doing something like that, knowing it’s got to be perfect first time and that other people would struggle to do it!”
Russ used cars to stage a miniature game of football in a TV advert created for MG. He adapted this later for Top Gear’s famous five a-side football matches with Toyota Aygos and Volkswagen Foxes.
And he’s taught grannies to do donuts in a Honda S2000 (“They had the time of their lives,” he chuckles).
But increasingly he finds himself struggling to make modern, sophisticated cars do what he wants. He tells me, “Cars are riddled with gizmos and electronics. You need to disconnect the ABS, traction control, sometimes we’ve even had to have an engineer down with a laptop to reprogram a car.
“It used to be that you’d just stick some tape over the button on the handbrake and maybe disconnect the ABS and away you’d go. I couldn’t do handbrake turns in a new Jaguar recently because the brake was button-operated and wouldn’t deploy above 10mph.
“I put some smaller wheels on a Nissan 350Z to force the back end of the car to break away for another stunt, but the car sensed a fault and went into ‘low power mode’.”
Russ isn’t involved in the live show at Autosport this year, due to similar nannying: “Too many organisers now try to dictate what they want you to do and I’ve had to tell some of them ‘it’s not possible’.
“But they go and get someone else to do it, and you see them trying to do too much. Someone’s going to get hurt.”
Finally, the most important questions of all - the ones from YOU, our readers. Owen Lloyd asks 'What has been the hardest car to drive in the display shows?'
"One of the most difficult things I've ever done in a display is drive a AWD truck on two wheels. I spent a week practicing to do that, but got it right in the end. It was so frightening I was sick."
Another question from Owen – 'How should I go about learning to do the stunts that you do?
"I learnt 95 per cent of everything I do competing in Auto Tests, and there's nothing better than that for fine-tuning your relatively low-speed car control. The reason I became British champion is because I could handbrake turn to perfection. Auto Testing is the way to go if people really want to the level I have."
Question number three: 'How did it feel to star in the Montego ad and let an actor take all the credit?'
"I didn’t mind at all. It's par for the course when you do the sort of thing I do. I've done 20 to 30 commercials, and I don’t think there's one which has actually shown me personally. But I get a lot of satisfaction and personal pride out of doing it. I know the actor has got a lot of drinks out of it!"
'What's the most fun you've ever had in a car?'
"I've got the best job in the world. I enjoy driving the Mitsubishi Evo – drifting in it is great fun. I think the most fun I've had in a car over the past 35 years is the International Rallies. It doesn’t seem like fun at the time, but when I look back on it, I think wow, what an experience."
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Originariamente Scritto da Daniele86
se credavate di aver raggiunto l'apoteosi con il vecchietto nella 600 blu, questa signora lo batte a pieni voti...
fichissimo!
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