Ethan Blake-Jones

I count myself very fortunate to have grown up around supercars, my first ‘real’ drive was on a race track in dads Ferrari when I was only 14. The poster on my bedroom wall was a classic Mustang fast back, supercars where normal to me, which sounds crazy, but dad used to daily his 360, he’d drop me at school on his commute from home in the Black Country to his office in central London.

Out in the car with mom I would always see classic cars on the road, MGs, Fords and Jags and ask dad about them, the design and style fascinated me, but then I have been collecting vinyl records since I was 13… I like retro and I’m a petrol head…

Learning to drive in my MG cemented my love of classics and I’ve always been evangelistic about preserving the use of these rolling history books. I’d be constantly maintaining or modifying my MGB whilst at collage, but when I decamped to the University of Kent to study military history in Canterbury, I had to leave my beloved B at home and became a family project.

Dad and I would spend hours in the car up and down to Canterbury discussing what I wanted to create from the MG and one of our usual topics of conversation would revert to the current batch of motoring and restoration TV shows we’d been watching and why I didn’t feel they connected with me or my generation (most of whom don’t even watch TV…) the one that we both really liked was Goblin Works Garage…

I was completing my university course in 2020 and despite having an amazing three years in the military officer training corps whilst at Uni, meeting some friends for life and learning some very transferable skills, I wanted to pursue a career in hospitality, but suddenly the world was plunged into chaos with the pandemic… everything was about to change.

I spent the entire first lockdown in my flat in canterbury with no company other than a pigeon called Nigel who would visit my balcony. So as soon as I could get home, I wanted to continue the project that my MG had become. Talking on the phone every day with dad and Harvey I developed the idea to make our own TV show. Dad was in Film and Tv when I was growing up and his Paddock Life magazine brand gave us plenty of traction within the classic car domain, so we had all the assets around us. I wanted to create a show that encouraged people my age to drive classics, to show them that enthusiasm and passion can overcome most problems and classic cars are binary creatures that are easy to maintain and fix.

We found an old woodworking shop around the corner from our family home, signed a lease and got to work on creating the Paddock Speedshop – I hope you enjoy watching our journey as much as we all have in making it.

I’m going to tell you a little bit about the cars and the team here on the website and we’ll add video and updates as we continue production of our Television series.