Downton Abbey meets Ken Block at M-Sport’s grand old English mansion
The oak-paneled dining room of 17th-century English stately home may seem a strange place to be chatting about Ken Block, the finer points of building World Rally Cars and how to turn everything from Bentley Continental GTs to Jaguar I-Paces into race winners. The butlers and aristocrats who once frequented Dovenby Hall have long since moved on, the family silverware of old now replaced with motorsport trophies and cups while frames once bearing ancestral portraits now contain photos of rally winners spraying the champagne. It’s an eccentric juxtaposition current custodian and M-Sport boss Malcolm Wilson is clearly proud of, his local roots inspiring the decision to repurpose this abandoned country pile into a cutting-edge motorsport facility, powering everything from Ken Block’s Gymkhana cars to Ford’s factory WRC effort.
