My life in cars: Isle of Man TT racer Ian Hutchinson

If you're familiar with the utterly mad world of road racing, specifically the Isle of Man TT, Ian Hutchinson will need no introduction. If you are unfamiliar, he's the first - and so far only - rider to pick up five wins in TT race week, back in 2010, while his total of 16 victories on the island puts him fourth in the table of all-time greats (Joey Dunlop tops it, with 26).

Were it not for some serious injuries - resulting from deeply unlucky accidents since that famous week - Hutchy would sit higher up the rankings still. He's on the comeback trail at the TT this year, though, racing Hondas, with hopes of a return to the top of the podium in 2019 when he's fully fit.

The good news is that he loves things on four wheels, too. So just as TT 2018 was kicking off, we hitched a fairly breathtaking ride around the Mountain Course, with Hutchy behind the wheel of one of the Honda Civic Type R course cars. Time to learn about his car history. Over to Hutchy...

"My first ever car was a Peugeot 205 GTI, back in 1997. I crashed it twice! Lethal aren’t they? It’s the same old thing, though. If you knew when you were 17 what you know now, you probably wouldn’t crash it. As soon as you roll off the throttle mid corner, that back end comes round.

"I replaced it with a 205 GTI Dimma, with the massive body kit. I lost the back end on that big time. I steered into it, but I was full-on sideways and ended up rolling over twice. Yeah, not ideal. That was the end of the Dimma. I had a bit of a project going on with it at the time too; I’d just bought the more powerful Peugeot 405 Mi16 engine to put in it, so that was sat in the garage and I had to sell it."

"Then it was 1999, and the start of my bike racing career. I didn’t have a decent car for about seven years, when I got a second-hand Mitsubishi Lancer Evo VIII. It was an absolutely phenomenal car. I got it through one of John McGuinness’s mates who was in car dealing, so I got it at a good price. I had it quite a while – nearly two years – and I made my money back on it. They’re still fetching the same money ten years on!

"The thing I found is that you’d struggle to crash it, unless you just drove it into a wall, because it just sorts everything out for you, though it was most at home on country roads. I went to the Nürburgring on a lads’ trip and it struggled a bit, I think as soon as you get on a track it becomes more like a normal car.

"The tyres overheated, it was sideways a bit, and I was struggling to do two laps on a tank of fuel as well. Every second lap I had to limp the last bit to get to the petrol station. Small tank on them! That was a great car, though, and I’ve looked at them loads of times since. I’ve been thinking about buying another one, maybe an Evo IX MR."

"A Hummer H2 came next. It was about 2007, they were pretty dear then, and quite sought after. I think I gave about £40,000 for it. It’s the only car I’ve ever lost money on, and I lost a lot on it. Everything went wrong at that time, didn’t it? Fuel prices went up, the economy collapsed a bit and I had a Hummer on my drive.

"But I’d have one again; if I’m at the car auctions, I sometimes see them going through for ten grand. I’d sooner have one of these than a Range Rover, it’s so nice to drive around."

"I then ended up with a Porsche. It's not necessarily what I wanted, I just couldn’t sell the Hummer. I had to try and work my way out of it, so I part-exchanged it for a Porsche 996 Carrera 4S.

"I absolutely loved the look of it, but it wasn’t that nice to drive fast, it was a massive handful. The last sports car I’d had was the Evo, which was the total opposite. I guess if you went around the Nürburgring in the Porsche, it’d be good, probably better than the Mitsubishi."

"Then I bought a new house and sold everything I had. My big American motorhome, all my bikes and cars – everything went, all pitched into this house. Ever since, I’ve not really bought any sports cars myself, I’ve been lucky to get to drive stuff with my bike racing deals.

"With BMW, I got to drive an M4 for a couple of years – it’s effing fast, like, but you can easily get into trouble in them, can’t you? – and I had a go in an i8, too. Everywhere I parked it people were taking pictures, saying how nice it was. I’d never really been in anything where that’d happened."

"With Honda, I’ve got one of the new Civic Type Rs. In black, so it looks a bit more subtle. For me, the biggest step they’ve made with cars is with the selectable driving modes, like in the Type R.

"You can have two different cars in one; you press the sport button, and you’ve got what you want, but when you just want to go down the supermarket, you can put it in normal mode and you wouldn’t even know you’re in something fast."

"For something completely different, I’ve bought a Ford F-150 Raptor. It’s three years old, the last of the V8s. I wouldn’t have the new V6 version. You need a V8 if you’re going to have a pick-up like this, don’t you? It’s a beast of a car. The only problem is that parking spaces aren’t big enough these days.

"It’s got some big knobbly tyres, but I’m not too keen to take it off road. It’s so hard to get bits, and I’m afraid of something breaking. I had to get a ball joint over from America and it was a nightmare. I’m a bit cautious of anything that might break it; I don’t want it parked on the drive for six months while I’m trying to ship parts over.

"I don’t ride bikes on the road, not anymore. That’s how I got into racing, riding on the road, but now I’m into cars. I don’t know what the next thing is. When I get bored of the pick-up I’ll have to think of something else to get!"