A Porsche which once belonged to the Bin Laden family of Saudi Arabia and an Aussie supercar driven by former Top Gear presenter and racing driver Tiff Needell have been at photoshoots at a Saltney storage park.
Lock Stock Self Storage’s River Lane site has been chosen as a backdrop by prestige motoring magazines like Ultimate Porsche to show off an impressive stable of supercars many of them pimped by engine tuning experts MW Performance.
Their workshop and showroom is just a few hundred yards along the road from Lock Stock’s Saltney premises where the specialist garage also hire a 40-foot container to store spare engines, tyres and other parts and components.
The business began over 20 years ago when Marc Wale, a former aircraft engineer with British Aerospace, decided that he wanted to work with his first love, fast cars.
Marc, 47, originally from Broughton and now living in Chester, said: “I had always bought and sold cars as well as tuning and repairing them and I decided that’s what I wanted to do so I sold my Vauxhall Cavalier, bought a cheaper car and did it up and that was how it started.
“I did it with a few grand, no one gave me anything, and now we’ve grown the business so we’re one of the top tuning companies in the UK.”
They will tune and rebuild anything but specialise in General Motors cars, Vauxhall’s VXR range and Australian HSVs, Holden Special Vehicles, the performance arm of the Holden company in Australia, and Marc and his team are one of only two HSV experts in the UK.
He said: “One of the main reasons we chose Lock Stock was because their sites are so neat and tidy, really spick and span and that’s something I really believe in because I want people who come to my garage to see how neat it is.
“When people come to our business they will see the kind of care and attention we will give to their vehicle and that’s what impressed me about Lock Stock and it is a great backdrop for a photoshoot with all the containers a regulation dark green.
“We had the Bin Laden Porsche 911 alongside a Porsche Cayman that had been tuned and pimped by us, we had two HSV Maloo’s and one of them an ex-motoring press car which Tiff Needell drove at Silverstone which has now been sold.
“But we’ve still have the other Maloo as well as a Ford Mustang which is also an ex-press car and MWP’s new development car and a Stage 4.5 Nissan GT-R an ex MWP car and now one of our sales cars.
“The HSV Maloo is widely regarded as one of the coolest vehicles on the planet and is classed as the world’s fastest production commercial vehicle with a 6.2 litre Super Charged engine, while the GT-R is 650 horsepower and will do 200mph.
“We have a showroom next to the tuning shop and we’ve currently got around 25 various performance cars in there – we do specialise in HSV and Vauxhalls but we’ll do virtually anything – we recently played with an Ariel Atom for example.
“Every year we have an HSV Meet and this year it’s on Sunday, May 26, when we’ll have over 50 of the Thunder from Down Under parading from our Saltney and that’s a sight and a sound not to be missed.”
The cars in their showroom are worth more than half a million pounds with pride of place going to the HSV Maloo boasting a used car price tag of £50,000 and Marc said: “You can ask me what my dream car is, my answer is I have already had it.
“I’m not interested in Ferraris or Lamborghinis with their inflated prices – I love cars like the Nissan GT-R and the HSV’s.
“They’re a working man’s supercar without the price tag and image problem that comes with owning a Ferrari etc.”
Nick Powell, who launched Lock Stock with his brother Shon, in Denbigh in 1999, said: “We are proud of the fact that so many businesses now use our containers and that our Saltney site is regularly appearing in motoring magazines thanks to Marc’s company.
“We do like to make sure that our sites, and we have 18 of them now across North Wales and the Border Counties and down to Mid Wales, are always clean, tidy and well planned.
“We are always looking to diversify and to react to the market. The business started because we reacted to a demand and it has grown in response to demand.
“We are always looking at ways we can diversify and maximise the resources we have – you can’t afford to stand still in business.”
Lock Stock now has 18 sites across North and Mid Wales and even sell fireworks at their main hubs in Chester, Rhyl and Llandudno and on-line.
Their existing sites stretch from Bangor along the North Wales coast at Llandudno and Rhyl, on the Dee at Flint and Chester and inland at Denbigh, Mold, Wrexham and Newtown in Powys, and at Oswestry and Shrewsbury in Shropshire.
For more information on MW Performance go to https://www.mwperformance.co.uk/ and for more on Lock Stock go to http://www.lockstock.biz/
