"I served my apprenticeship with  Sherwood's garage working on Vauxhall and Jaguar, becoming workshop supervisor at 19 years old. I then moved on to another local garage, Breckon Hill Motors, and gained a wealth of experience from Ken Hart, workshop manager, working mainly on prestige cars including Rolls Royce, Aston Martin and Lagonda Bentleys. I also had the opportunity to work on Benato, Hassan, Hispano, Suiza and many morecars now very rare and collectable.  My third move was to Northern Sports Cars at Scorton, North Yorkshire where I was a junior partner. We were Lotus & TVR agents and only a few minutes from Croft racing circuit. I also worked at the circuit maintaining Lotus racing cars and anything else that required attention - up to Formula 5000. I left there in 1965 to try my hand at self employment, starting the Mike McKenna business and we are still here some 40 years later.


 

Mike with his new apprentice - grandson, Ben

On the personal side, I became the northern area autocross champion, being the only driver in the UK to win all eight rounds of the Players No.6 Autocross Championships which included the Ford rally team drivers Roger Clark and the still current works driver Barry Lee. Being unable to obtain sponsorship I retired unbeaten. I also competed in a number of sprints at Croft Autodrome.

Working on race cars as well as competing I gained a wealth of experience which would otherwise have been impossible to obtain. I was becoming well known for  repairing and tuning all makes of sports and racing vehicles and all of this helped establish my business."