A former BBC presenter is revving up for expansion with the classic car business which he set up from home after the pandemic put the brakes on his broadcasting career.
Blair Jacobs, a favourite with listeners of BBC Radio Humberside after joining initially on attachment in 1996, hung up his headphones in 2020 and never went back.
Instead he set up Pipe Dreams – a family business which pursues his passion for classic cars. After starting out transporting and storing treasured motors for trusting owners, Blair has marked the fifth anniversary of the business by rolling out a restoration service.
Blair said: “Cars have memories. We’ve had a love affair with cars and have capacity for about 40 – a Rolls Royce, a Bentley, a Triumph Stag, two Jags, some MGs.
“The restoration side has developed as more people have noticed that we were working on cars. They ask if we can do a bit of work on their cars while we are looking after them. One person asked us to do a big job and that gave me the idea of building up that side of the business.”
Blair’s love of cars was with him almost from the start. His father was a motoring journalist and his uncle was a successful racing driver in the saloon touring car championship.
Blair said: “I got an MG Midget when I was 19, rebuilt the engine and sold it when I was preparing to come up here in 1996.”
Cars took a back seat after he made the move from BBC Radio Solent but they were never far away as Blair and his wife Stella settled into life in East Yorkshire and daughter Harriet arrived in 2000.
While all three were at home during lockdown thoughts turned to the future. Broadcast and media work was dwindling, and although Blair still presents major events for clients including Humber Business Week and the Hull & Humber Chamber of Commerce, he wanted something different.
He said: “My plan was to do commercial transport. We came up with the idea of finding somewhere else to store our cars and we found that other classic car owners were interested.”
The building, which Pipe Dreams took on in September 2020, is a converted agricultural unit with a good finish on the floor, triple insulation to keep out the damp, and a location close to the M62 which is within easy reach of Hull, Beverley, Goole and beyond.
When an adjacent workshop became available towards the end of 2024 Blair had the space to grow. When he was introduced to Ian Coulson, an Audi master technician who had been working at York College, he also had the expertise.
Storage clients range from people who live locally and call in regularly, to others who have relocated and call in during visits to the area.
Blair said: “Some of them just wake up on a nice day and decide there and then to collect their car and take it for a day out. One client lives in Jersey and makes regular journeys to visit people in Beverley so he keeps a special BMW here to use when he’s in the area.
“Others bring their cars here because they don’t have the space at home or they don’t want it sitting in their driveway. We have cars that have been here for three years and haven’t turned a wheel. We keep them all covered and clean and with the battery charged.”
A recent job involved collecting a Rolls Royce in York and delivering it to Portsmouth for shipping to Portugal. Blair also provides services to a contact who imports cars and converts them to use in the UK, to an auction house which sends cars all over the country, and to individuals who need to send their supercars to Leeds for servicing.
A project which is older than the business is the rebuilding of an MG which Blair and Harriet have been working on since lockdown.
He said: “It was an old car that had been taken apart and was in boxes. We started it during Covid and it’s just a case of finishing it off. There are cars that people take to bits with the best of intentions and then they run out of money, time or inclination.
“I had already built three MGs and I thought it might be a nice project for us. We could have done it by now but client cars always take priority. It’s sitting next to another MG which is a customer car that we are totally restoring.”
Blair sees technology and industry trends as a double-edged sword for the classic cars sector.
He said: “I am a huge fan of British classic cars. Rolls Royce, Bentley, Jaguar, Triumph. The engineering on a Rolls and a Bentley is stunning. You can see how beautiful everything is because they are built by people and not robots.
“Things like 3D printing will enable cars to be kept on the road, which is important because it’s not just about having your car in pristine condition. Cars are built to be driven.
“But I’m struggling to see how the new vehicles today will become classic cars because we have this obsession with EVs. It’s created a whole raft of disposable cars that all look the same, built by robots and full of computers. It’s massively important to look after what we have got.
“There’s an argument for converting your old MG to electric and there are companies that will make you an electric classic car. That’s brilliant for those who want it but it’s not heritage.”