Swiver by Piers Beckley Stef Morgan

But before Stef can do anything about this he's framed as an industrial spy and fired. Rick rubs it in on the way past – it's just business. And by the way I'm fucking your wife.

Stef is thrown out of his house and starts on a downward spiral of homelessness and alcoholism, but it's arrested when he gets a job in a garage working for Lianne Sutton. Lianne is a petrolhead too. They drive fast cars together and bond. She remortgages her house to build a prototype of the pollution free-car, the Swiver.

No-one is interested in developing the Swiver. It would turn the financial model of the car companies on their head, and the shareholders won't go for it, they claim. Without the money to develop it themselves, the two of them can't do anything else. Lianne sells her business – and that gives the two of them just enough money to enter the Swiver in the Gumball 3000 Rally – a win there will give them publicity and access to enough money to develop the car as a production model. If Stef and Lianne can't find someone to support them, they're out of money, out of work, and out of hope.

At the opening ceremony, the rules are set out: 3,000 miles in seven days via mystery locations. But Rick is there too, competing in BMC's new car. He clashes with Stef, realises that if the Swiver works, his company's stock will go down – as will he, being the man in charge of the no-electric-cars rule within the corporation. He needs to stop Stef finishing by any means necessary.

During the course of the rally, Stef and Lianne show blueprints and pitch the Swiver to various investors. On the third day, the cars are taken out onto a Formula 1 track and tested – the Swiver does as well as some of the performance cars. People are impressed. One investor is interested in turning the car into a production model. But as the rally continues Rick uses every opportunity to get Stef disqualified or otherwise removed from the rally – framing him for theft, hiring thugs to attack him, and causing a possible investor to have a heart attack. Rick will stop at nothing.

Rick brings Stef's ex-wife Susan to one of the parties – she and Rick have a vicious argument and leave separately. Susan talks with Stef, and it seems that she still feels something for him. Lianne watches heartbroken as they leave the party together.

Stef still loves Susan and tells her so. They talk about his dreams, the car, how it works. That he's invested the last of his money in the world in entering the Gumball, that he needs to find an investor here or he and his best friend will be driven bankrupt. She promises to leave Rick and come back to him. Stef's the happiest man alive.

The next day and the Swiver doesn't start. Lianne and Stef are left behind as everyone else moves on to the next checkpoint – and if they can't make it there by the next day they'll miss the airlift to the final leg. Susan blows Stef a kiss as she parts on Rick's arm, with the blueprints. The two of them had arranged for her to seduce Stef to get the secrets of the Swiver out of him! Not only that, but she recorded their bed-time talk on a mini-recorder and photocopied the blueprints – in as neat a piece of industrial espionage as you might ever hope to see, all the Swiver's secrets now belong to the BMC! She also points out on the way past that Stef wasn't that good a fuck, or a husband, never has been, and she only ever wanted his money. And what good is he now? She can't believe he ever thought that she wanted him.

Stef reaches his lowest point – he just gives up and starts knocking back the whisky. But Lianne won't let him. She believes in him. But they've got to get to the next checkpoint fast if they're not going to miss the airlift to the final leg. After fixing the sabotage and getting the Swiver running again, through some fast driving on Lianne's part – and breaking the speed limit more than once – they just about make it.

The plane takes them to the last leg of the rally – a desolate place, far from civilisation, with a portable hotel built specially for the Gumball 3000! Stef and Lianne break into Rick's room to find and destroy the stolen blueprints – Stef can always recreate them. While there, they find enough evidence to put Rick behind bars for corporate fraud. Unfortunately they can't get in contact with the outside world. But as soon as they finish the race, Rick is history. Not only that, but an investor is interested in putting money into a production model – all they need to do now is finish.

The final part of the race is through twisting mountain roads – and Rick tries to drive Stef off the road and kill him! Through great driving, Stef manages to stop the Swiver going off the cliff – but neither the car nor its occupants are in good shape. In particular, Stef's head makes a quite stunning collision with the driving wheel.

Stef wakes up with Lianne next to him. Which is sweet.

That's when he realises that a) the car is travelling down a twisty mountain road with no safety fence and b) he and Lianne are both in the back of the car. He jumps to the front, tries the wheel, just manages to stop the car going over the cliff. Tries the brakes – cut. Oh.

And the blood from the wound on his forehead keeps dripping into his eyes.

Stef manages to keep going, seeing Rick in his BMC car ahead of them – but the Swiver's taking a lot of damage as Stef uses the cliff to friction-brake.

Then the final hairpin turn. Too fast to turn, no safety, no cliff to brake with. He cuts down through a tree-lined area between the two legs of the hairpin, cutting Rick off and blocking him. Rick brakes hard, but it's not enough to stop him crashing into the Swiver, turning his car and trashing it.

Rick gets out of the car and starts beating on Stef, hard. Turns him into a bloody mess. Taunts him – now he's going to rape Lianne and kill them both, see what you made me do.

That's when Lianne knocks Rick over the head with a monkey wrench. She's awake at last. But Rick quickly takes her down as well. Tells her that now she's made things even harder for herself. Stef, beaten to a pulp, sees a small trickle of spilled petrol coming from the BMC car and running over the road. As does Rick, which gives him an idea.

Rick takes the spare petrol tank from the back of his car and pours petrol over the two of them.

Lianne tells Stef she loves him. Stef starts to take his clothes off. Hardly the time, she tells him.

Rick's got the matches. He lights one, prepares to set light to the two of them – but then Stef throws his petrol-soaked shirt over Rick's lighted match. It ignites. Rick's being burned. He staggers back, drops the shirt...

...which hits the petrol on the floor

...which ignites the BMC car

...which blows Rick to smithereens.

Couldn't do that with a Swiver.

As the burning car keeps them warm while they wait for the rescue helicopter to arrive, they snuggle together for the first time.

ENDS