FirstCar and Adrian Flux have announced the winner of this year’s ‘Win a car’ prize draw.
Grace Taylor, 19-years-old and from Huddersfield, was randomly selected from the 54,494 entrants who entered the annual prize.
Throughout the year 1,093 instant win prizes had been won, but the star prize was a brand-new electric car, a Fiat 500E Action, worth £23,835.
Grace’s parents were on the secret handover and managed to get Grace down to Adrian Flux’s headquarters in Kings Lynn, to receive her prize.
FirstCar’s TikTok star Keanan was there to welcome her and gave Grace the surprise of her life.
Grace said: “I was just in complete shock really, I can’t believe it.
“It’s amazing, it’s such a great feeling. I’m really happy and I just can’t kind of believe it’s real. I wasn’t expecting it. I vaguely remember entering the competition at the time and I was shocked when I got the phone call about the dashcam and winning that. I never even thought about winning the top prize or anything.
“I did think it was quite a long way to come for a dashcam but my mum just said they needed some publicity for it and she just basically convinced me by saying ‘oh we’re going to have a day out’ and I just kind of went along with it.
“I’m looking forward to driving to some of the towns and cities on little day trips and stuff near Huddersfield. I might go to Meadowhall or something.”
The competition winner passed her test 10 months ago and has been driving a Suzuki Swift.
She has used FirsCar, which creates a series of content in print and online that serves as a helpful resource for learner and young drivers, to aid her journey from L-plates to getting on the road.
Her delighted mother Clare, who also travelled over 130 miles by train and then taxi to collect the car, was relieved she managed to keep the huge win a secret.
Clare said: “It was difficult as I’m one of those people that can’t keep secrets.
“When they said ‘we want it to be a surprise’ I thought: ‘You’ve just told the worst person in the world, you should have told my husband’. But I did it because, obviously, what a thrill for her, what a surprise. If she would have known, it wouldn’t have been the same.
“It was difficult because she kept saying: ‘Why have we got to go all the way to King’s Lynn just for a dashcam, why can’t they post it?’ In the end I just said: ‘They want some publicity to show that people are winning the prizes. It’s a day off work, we’ll have a day out and she fell for it’.
“I was anxious really because I kept thinking ‘I hope she doesn’t ask me too many questions’. If somebody asks me something to my face, I’m not very good at lying. I didn’t want her to ask me too much and I was tired because we’d been up since 5.30am and we had to get the train. Luckily she was reading and I was reading and it didn’t happen.”
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