For a bloke who has spent 23 years wandering the world making internationally popular TV car shows - Richard Hammond seems remarkably well adapted to the wilds of Worcestershire.
For more than a decade, he has lived near the market town of Ross-on-Wye but is rapidly becoming better known in the area for a classic car restoration business called The Smallest Cog, established in 2021 on an industrial estate outside Hereford, half an hour from his home.
And for the TV programme Richard Hammond’s Workshop that it has spawned - one of several that have become internationally recognised.
The Smallest Cog was born when a local car restoration team – Neil Greenhouse, son Anthony and brother Andrew, who had done an excellent job of looking after Hammond’s classic car collection for half a dozen years – suddenly lost their rented premises in Hereford.
Not wanting to lose his technician-friends, Hammond suggested they set up a business that would take in outside classic car work as well as continuing to do his own work. That led to the launch of the Discovery TV programme, now heading for its fourth series.
Away from TV, Hammond had always held a desire to have his own car restoration business, which is why he was prepared to sell prime models (a Jaguar E-Type and a pristine Bentley among them) to fund The Smallest Cog’s modern premises that now include latest-spec car lifts, fettling bays and a state-of-the-art paint booth.
There’s even a new mezzanine floor with space for spares, a production office for the TV people and Hammond’s own modest office – into which seven of us crowded one December morning.
Matt Prior and I had come to record, with Hammond’s help, the Christmas edition of our podcast, My Week In Cars.
We had our own cameramen (one stills, one video) and two more cameramen were on hand from Hammond’s side to record stuff for the Discovery programme: they wanted to use some clips of us chatting. Hammond, used to the mayhem of setting up, grinned and chatted.
So many bodies soon warmed the little office even though it was a brisk morning and the downstairs workshop doors were open because The Smallest Cog’s workshop crew were ending a successful year with a three-day clear-out.
One of their achievements had been a Nice Try Award for Hammond’s 1962 Opel Kadett (known widely as Oliver) at the 2023 Festival of the Unexceptional but we were soon to learn that his ambitions extend much further than that.
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