With the sun shining and a stiff sea breeze blowing in his face, life was looking good for a Wheatley engineer when In Business rang him on his mobile the other day.

Good luck to him too, for he was on his way by ferry from Poole to Jersey, where he was to take part in a classic car hill climb event when I caught up with him.

And he told me frankly: “Had I not changed my ways I would not be alive at all now.”

For Jo White, 47, who originally joined the motor racing business 30 years ago when he started working for the Reynard team in Bicester, became an alcoholic and was told by doctors that if he did not give up he would die.

But now he has rebuilt his life by going back to his first addiction, classic road racing cars.

He has started Vulcan Dezign and is increasingly in demand for his specialist welding and general engineering skills.

Friend of eight years’ standing, Paul Hardiman, a classic car journalist and the proud owner of the 1971 lime green Ford Escort that the two were taking to Jersey, vouched for those skills.

He said: “Jo built the entire roll-cage on the car and word is getting around about just how good he is.”

He added; “We took the car a couple of years ago to one of my favourite events, the Sprint at Cornbury Park, near Charlbury. That was the year of the floods and the event itself was a washout but I think he saw then how he could get back into the sport.”

For about six years Mr White lived on Government benefits and, in his words, felt himself to be “completely lost.”

Then, between April and December last year, he began to rebuild his life by rebuilding classic cars. He took the decision to stop taking the long-term sickness disability benefit he had been relying on for so long, and set up his own business.

He said: “I started Vulcan Dezign in December 2008 and work is coming in slowly but surely. What is good is that I get my business known by attending events like sprints and hill climbs which, of course, I love doing.”

He added: “I remember I told myself I had to get off the drink — that I had two children and owed it to them. I locked myself away for six months and managed to kick the habit.”

Now he has been chosen as one of the nation’s Top 100 in the Government-backed Barclays Trading Places Awards, set up to recognise people who overcome adversity by turning their backs on benefits and coming to grips head-on with challenges such as disability, or facing up to difficult family responsibilities.

Other partners in the Trading Places scheme include Jobcentre Plus, the Prince’s Trust, Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (BERR), and Leonard Cheshire Disability.

Barclays managing director for local business, John Davis, said: “The calibre of this year’s entries is outstanding, and we hope that with this recognition, Vulcan Dezign will continue on the road to success.

“We also hope Jo’s story will inspire other budding entrepreneurs in Oxford who face similar difficulties in their private lives, to come forward and turn their own business dreams into reality.”

Mr White’s biggest contract so far has come from Bugatti specialists Ivan Dutton, of Ickford in Buckinghamshire, where he was involved in recreating Bugatti look-alikes for a film (though exactly which film is still a trade secret.) And apart for working for others in the racing fraternity, Mr White is now working as a partner with Energy Efficient Motorsport in its campaign to build a greener racing car.

He has ambitious plans to develop his own design of a green single-seater racing car powered by alternative fuels.

Mr White said: “I am working on a biethanol powered car at the moment.”

He added: “That warning from the doctors really made me give myself a kick up the backside. I took a course at Rycotewood to help me.”

Rycotewood is a college which helps people move from the world of learning to the world of work. It was founded in Thame in the 1930s, but has now moved its campus into Oxford.

Certainly, Mr White’s new life is a more varied one than sitting at home and drawing benefits. Many of his contracts are now coming from Jersey, which involves frequent trips.

And the first time In Business tried to contact him he was also on a boat — in Venice.

He said that he had gone to Italy for business and pleasure and several calls came in, including ours, from people wanting work done on cars.

o Contact: Vulcan Dezign, 07963 177376.