One year, to support the Colin McRae Rally game, I had the idea of making a very small number of replica helmets to give away as competition prizes. Colin was happy to go along with the idea as long as I made an extra one for him. So I contacted our European offices and they were up for the idea, which gave me a production run of just 6 helmets (Colin, UK, Benelux, Spain, Germany, France).

The first thing was to buy the helmets. These were the exact make, model and size as Colin’s real helmet (iirc they were Sparco, from Italy). Then we had to ship them to the artist in Europe (iirc Holland) who had handpainted Colin’s original helmet and who painted all six of these identically. Then they were shipped to Colin in Scotland (he was living in Switzerland at the time) for him to sign on his next visit there. Then they were shipped back to Southam and thence shipped to the individual countries. So it took a while and a fair bit of logistics.

But it was worth it. The end result was gorgeous. A genuine hand painted race helmet signed by a great race driver. When they came back to the office after signing I took a look at them and would have liked one for myself.

So there are a very small group of gamers around Europe who now own a great momento of Colin McRae which I am sure that they are treasuring.