The Williams Formula One team has taken a former garage owner to the High Court in a bid to reclaim a historic Grand Prix car that vanished without trace six years ago. The £750,000 FW23 — one of just nine chassis built for the team’s 2001 title campaign — was loaned to a Shropshire performance shop as a showpiece. When Williams asked for it back, the company had folded, the director had suffered a life-changing stroke, and the car had simply disappeared.
A loan that went silent
In 2015, Williams entrusted the FW23 to Autotech Performance Ltd, a specialist outfit based in Telford. The agreement was straightforward: the car would sit on display at the garage, a rolling advertisement for both parties, until the team asked for its return. That request came in October 2021. By then, Autotech had already ceased trading. Its director, Peter Thorpe, had closed the doors on 30 June that year. The company entered voluntary liquidation shortly after.
Williams’ legal team says the silence that followed was deafening. Letters went unanswered. The car was nowhere to be found. Now, the Grove-based constructor is seeking either the immediate return of the chassis or damages exceeding £1 million — a figure that reflects not just the car’s market value but its irreplaceable place in the team’s heritage collection.
The man at the centre of the storm
Peter Thorpe, 58, does not dispute that the car was delivered to his premises. He does not dispute the existence of the loan agreement. What he disputes — fiercely — is any suggestion that he knows where the FW23 is today.
In his defence, filed at the High Court in London, Thorpe paints a picture of a man whose grip on reality has been fractured by illness. He suffered a stroke on 7 October 2018, an event he says left him with significant cognitive impairment and memory loss. He cannot recall speaking to the liquidators’ valuer, C & K Recoveries Ltd, when they visited the site on 8 August 2021. He cannot recall making any claim of ownership. His barrister, Duncan MacPherson, puts it bluntly: Thorpe “believes that he has not told anyone that he owned the car, because he knew this to be untrue.”
What he does remember is seeing the car on that August valuation day. It was there, in the garage, where it had always been. After that, his memory goes dark. He never returned to the premises. The liquidation proceeded. The car, presumably, did not.
Competing narratives in the courtroom
Williams’ barrister, Richard Clegg, offers a different version of events. He tells the court that Thorpe “wrongfully claimed” to the valuer that he had personally purchased the car — a claim the liquidators appear to have accepted at face value. Clegg argues it is “to be inferred” that Thorpe himself removed the car, or arranged its removal, and that he “retained possession and control of the car, and continues to do so.”
The inference is damning. But inference is not evidence. And in the absence of the car — or a witness who saw it leave — the case rests on a battle of probabilities.
Thorpe’s team counters that the vehicle could have been taken by anyone after his last visit. They also challenge the £750,000 valuation, arguing the FW23 was a show car without an engine, a distinction that could slash its worth significantly. For Williams, the distinction is irrelevant. The car is part of a curated heritage fleet, maintained not for sale but for history. Its value, they argue, is not merely mechanical.
A championship pedigree in limbo
The FW23 is no ordinary exhibit. Chassis 004 — the car in question — was driven during the 2001 season by Ralf Schumacher and Juan Pablo Montoya. Schumacher finished fourth in the drivers’ championship that year; Montoya sixth. Michael Schumacher, in the dominant Ferrari, took the title. But the Williams BMW package won four races and secured 80 constructor points. The car represents a high-water mark for the team: the last season they finished a genuine title contender.
Only nine FW23s were ever built. Williams retains most in its own collection. The loss of even one is a wound to the institutional memory of a team that has struggled to recapture that form in the two decades since.
Why it Matters
This case is about more than a missing race car. It exposes the fragility of heritage preservation in a sport that moves at breakneck speed, where history is often outsourced to third parties with neither the resources nor the obligation to protect it. If a team as storied as Williams cannot secure the return of a championship chassis loaned in good faith, what hope for the countless other artefacts scattered across private garages and forgotten warehouses? The court’s decision will set a precedent for how motorsport’s tangible legacy is guarded — or lost — in the years to come.
