BANNONBALL: Kiltale's Alan Bannon on his love for supercars

Alan Bannon will never forget the day. The day, 37 years ago, when he saw it for the first time - a Porsche 911. 

Sleek, shiny and radiant in red he felt the car was the business; the bees knees. He was only 10 years old but seeing it there was, he says now, a “lightbulb” moment; a personal revelation. The car was in his uncle’s garage just outside Kildare town and everything about the deluxe, opulent-looking model made a profound impression on him.
“My mother made sure I had a little job so I worked in my uncle’s garage every Saturday. One Saturday I opened the garage doors and I saw this Red Porsche 911, a very rare sight back in those days,” he recalls.
“That just ignited something inside me, I just loved cars from that day. I still remember that car as if it was yesterday. I loved the colour, the noise, I remember it reversing into the garage, the sound of the engine and all the dust blowing away from it.”
That love for cars, particularly those slick, smooth-looking, sumptuous supercars - like the Porsche 911 - have remained with Alan ever since.
It was one of the reasons, but not the main reason, why Bannon bought the European franchise for the Cannonball supercar event which has been held annually in Ireland since 2009. Each year a string of supercars and their drivers will go on tour for a few days.
In a colourful cavalcade they will travel through towns and cities the drivers in their super-cool, expensive vehicles giving people an opportunity to see them up close - Ferraris, McLarens, Lamborghinis, Aston Martins, Maseratis, Rolls Royces, Bentleys and of course, Porsches. 
The aim is to whip up funds for various charities and over the past 10 years the Cannonball road tours have generated €1,016,000 to help good causes. 
This year’s tour will get underway at Malahide Castle on Friday 6th September. From there the cavalcade of expensive machines will travel down the country to Ballymaloe, Killarney, Limerick, Ballina, Sligo as well as Slane Castle and village.
This unique motoring extravaganza will involve over 180 supercars some of the them driven by well-known by drivers dressed up like well-known characters from stage, film and politics such as Cat Woman, Superman, Spiderman, Batman and Donald Trump himself.
Cannonball is now a major, commercially-run festival for car lovers, involving months of planning with two full-time staff and 70 volunteers involved - and the origins of it can be traced back to that day when young Alan Bannon saw that red Porsche parked in his uncle’s garage. 

KILTALE

While he spent his early years in Kiltale, Alan Bannon - along with their parents Bridget and Liam and sister Sylvia - moved to Kildare town when he was seven. It was there young Alan went to school spending weekends and holidays working in his uncle Joe’s garage.
Interested in art, Alan studied in Dublin. He learned new skills such as signwriting. At 23 he set up his own company, AB Signs, working initially from home before moving to bigger venues as more orders came in. He worked hard and the enterprise grew and grew. It now employs six people carrying out a range of tasks such as shopfront and commercial signage - and much more besides. 
The willingness to graft was something Bannon learned from early on in his life - and it has served him well. 
“We always had a very good work ethic at home. Both my parents thought me that. Also, I think spending time in my uncle’s garage at weekends and holidays would have allowed me to see how business was done. I would have been surrounded by cars, it was the place I liked being in, it was a place in my life I felt comfortable,” recalls Alan who is now 10 years back living in Kiltale. 

Running his own signage company, as well as developing the Cannonball franchise, has thought Bannon some useful lessons. Hard lessons about business and life - and he also plenty of useful advise for those starting out in the commercial world. 
“I think they should think outside the box, they should create something that’s very unique, and stay focused on it. By all means listen to advice but go with your gut, trust your gut. If you think that people who surround you aren’t being honest, you’ll know yourself. 
“What happens is that people come up with a business idea and they work very hard, they might get some very bad advice along the way or they might surround themselves with people who may not be trustworthy or loyal. If your gut tells you something about that person I think you should go with that.” 

RISK AND REWARD

Risk taking is something Alan Bannon - who is a father of a son Ross - does “every week, every year.” Investing time and funds in his own sign business was something of a risk and a challenge - and so was buying the Cannonball franchise. Yet he felt in his bones he was on the right road. 
There have been occasions when he has “walked the floor at four in the morning” wondering about some aspect of business or other but he points out that even through the tough times both AB Signs and the Cannonball (which is run as a separate commercial enterprise) have stayed on the road. They survived the storm. 
“In the sign business the recession was definitely a challenge, opening the post and not knowing what’s in it, maybe getting a letter from a receiver saying that a company you worked with that owes you money is going out of business, the next letter could be the same. We were writing money off left, right and centre in 2009 and 2010 and that was very, very hard. We had to really cut our cloth, that was the biggest challenge. 
“The biggest challenge for the event business, Cannonball, is to keep thinking of new ideas; to keep it energised, securing sponsors and working within budgets.” 

 

 

He attributes the origins of the Cannonball project to his mother Bridget, who worked with the Barretstown Children’s Charity. “One day I came home and I saw my mother was upset over a child she had worked with in Barretstown and I said some day I’ll do something for that charity.
“That was in 2007. I was very busy at the time and parked the idea for a few years. We set it up in 2009 and raised awareness and money for the charity and it was all due to the inspiration of my mother. We gathered a team around us and got moving. We had 137 cars at the first event and now 10 years later we have 187 cars.” 
“Cannonball is an events company and we pay our tax and our VAT, we pay our insurance, we pay everything a company has to pay. We then make a donation to charity and that’s how we have raised over one million euro over the last 10 years.” Much of that money comes from bucket collections made among the thousands of people who show up to see the cars. Then there’s donations, sponsorship. 
Running the Cannonball project has long shown to Bannon just how much goodwill there is out there in the world with people from all over Ireland as well as the UK, America, and Dubai, willing to bring their cars and take part in the tour to generate funds.
Although he could never have known it at the time the sight of that red Porsche 911 in his uncle’s garage back in the day was to have a profound effect on him and the route he has taken in life. 
It inspired him, now he wants to do the same for others. 
“I hope that somewhere along the line I can inspire children to have a smiliar lightbulb moment, to see one of the cars and say I want to work hard shat I can have that.” 
And yes Alan Bannon did finally end up owning his very own Porsche 911. 

 

Coronation Street actor Ryan Thomas on Cannonball.

 

ALAN BANNON ON ....

THE CHALLENGES OF RUNNING CANNONBALL 

“The event costs a lot of money to run, our insurance costs are cruel. We have 70 volunteers but they all have to be provided with vehicles, diesel, accommodation, meals, expenses, clothing but insurance is a huge cost. There’s a huge amount of planning involved. We shut down cities and towns, we hire kilometres of barriers, we have huge promotion and advertising campaigns so when you go to that level of spend you have to make sure you get in money to cover it. It’s like a commercial company. You spend money and hope it comes in. 

HIS PHILOSOPHY AS REGARDS  RUNNING A BUSINESS

“I think it’s important to keep standards very high, place on strong emphasis on quality, making sure you supply a quality product. If you do that you will survive. We’ve been through the recession, we survived. We started Cannonball in the recession, survived that, all the odds were against us. When you think back who would have thought in 2009 a procession of supercars would succeed and still be going 10 years later? 

ON THE IMPORTANCE OF HAVING A GOOD TEAM TO WORK WITH 

“I’ve walked the floors at four in the morning worrying about things, I have without doubt a very good team around me now but it’s taken 10 years to get that good team. That’s one very important ingredient in business is to surround yourself with people you can trust and you can depend on.” 

ON FUNDRAISING

“We encourage everyone to come out and see the cars it’s a free event to the public to come up and photograph the cars. We raise funds through bucket collections, charity auction and donations.”