What is it that drives a man to spend seven and a half years of his spare time rebuilding a car? At first sight the thing doesn’t make sense, there must surely be better things to do. But here I am at the end of that time, looking back at the enormity of it, the frustrations, the cost, the hours, the problems, but most of all the challenge and the fun and the unique satisfaction. I will never forget the day that Bluey, with zero miles on the clock, passed her MOT and I took her for a 120 mile  run through Ledbury, Bromyard, Tenbury Wells  and Kidderminster; a beautiful sunny day with my new GT6 running sweet as a nut, like that largely because of my efforts, of my attention to detail, of my determination not to let anything go that wasn’t the best I could do.

I must admit straight away that I don’t have any special skills, at least not any relevant to rebuilding a car. OK, I’ve had a few bangers in my time starting with an old Morris Minor in the mid sixties, kept on the road out of the meagre finances of an impoverished student. That at least, taught me the basics of bodge-it-yourself car maintenance and avoid the clutches of the MOT tester. On reflection, I believe that the most vital skill in a rebuild project is patience, the job will take as long as it takes. When I was nearing the end of rebuilding Bluey, John Kipping said to me, ‘remember, the last half day takes a fortnight’. How true. Patience, not oodles of mechanical knowledge is the essence of a restoration. There are plenty of people around with the brains you can pick for the mechanical knowledge.

So to any reader contemplating a rebuild, my advice would be to be prepared for a long job. On the plus side though it isn’t actually very difficult for someone with patience and a vaguely practical bent and it has the major advantage over many other pastimes like gardening for example in that once you’ve done a bit it stays done. The more you do, the more confident you get and the more you are encouraged to continue.

One last caveat. I have never seen it written down elsewhere before but it is certainly a fact, car restoration is an extremely noisey business. Picture the scene, it is a calm, still, summer day. The birds are singing and the soft bleating of sheep in a nearby field can be heard. Neighbours are sitting in their gardens under parasols, only the chink of bone china and the munching of biscuits disturbs the peace. Enter Jim on the scene, clad in overalls, googles and leather gauntlets brandishing a Black and Decker four inch angle grinder. He proceeds to hack off some rusty protuberance from his pride and joy prior to welding on a new one. For a full two minutes noise levels in a fifty yard radius approach a threshold of pain. Later in the evening in the Gardeners Arms people from the next village  claim the noise quite disturbed their cricket match. I sit queitly supping my pint doing my best to assume an air of complete innocence.

The seeds of my GT6 project were sown in about 1987. Roger my eldest son, who had already owned a succession of bangers was wistfully contemplating a flirtation with an MGB. His financial situation made this little more than a pipe-dream, but he got as far as discussing the prospect with his uncle, my brother Chris. Chris at the time a Spartan owner and therefore a dedicated Triumph buff immediately threw up his hands in horror. An MGB, what a dreadful suggestion! He then went on to expose the virtues of the GT6; beautiful looks, beautiful engine, easy to maintain etc. etc. At this point Roger came down to earth with a bump and realised that reality was more likely to be another Mini or Ford Escort, but not before his girlfriend had presented him with  a copy of the Brooklands book on the GT6.

The Brooklands book. Inscribed by the author at presumably the date of purchase.

One cold, wet Sunday afternoon a few weeks later I was sitting in front of  roaring log fire in our living room idly thumbing through some magazines when I came across the Brooklands book. On reading it I recalled that many years ago an old college chum of mine who had not got married and therefore had plenty of cash paid us a visit in his brand new GT6. He let me have drive, and I recalled the amazing power and silky smooth engine. Do 43 year olds drive such things? Now I was pipe-dreaming, or was I?

There was clearly no way I could afford a decent one. Few married blokes can justify spending several grand on a fad. On the other hand, for someone who enjoys driving, my motoring career had seen a pretty boring selection of cars. The college-day Mog was replaced by an ancient Ford Anglia which I ran for seven years, by which time it was very rusty and I was married with three kids. We towed a Sprite 400 caravan with it all over the UK for years, some of the resulting traffic queues are on just disappearing.

When the Anglia went to the scrapyard I raised a bank load to buy a Corsair 2000E, which sounds impressive and it certainly shifted the Sprite 400, but oh what a bloody awful V4! I’ve driven smoother tractors. It was eventually replaced with a MkII Ford Escort which is what I was driving at the time of reading the Brooklands book. A pretty boring line of cars, you have to admit.

So back at the log fire, I’m thinking to myself why shouldn’t I have a dabble at something more exciting? On the following Thursday I splashed out on a copy of Exchange & Mart and started perusing the Triumph section. I’m hooked!

For complex reasons loosely related to Maggie’s (Thatcher) calls many years ago to, ‘get on your bike’ I live in rural Worcestershire but work in Sheperd’s Bush. The contrast can be quite alarming. Inevitable this style of life means long car journeys between the two places. The trusty Ford Escort knew the way like an old cart horse, I just used to turn the ignition, call ‘home’ and I could feel the steering wheel turning in my hand as she fought her way westwards through the rush hour traffic. On my next day off after purchasing said Exchange & Mart I decided to return home via Leighton Buzzard to visit GB Sports Cars. For those that have never been there its like one of those old USAF air bases where they dump and forget old planes they no longer want. There are lines and lines of old Triumphs ranging from the exceptionally good to the total restoration required category. The odd rusty TR7 dilutes the place a bit. The other end of the yard is devoted to spare parts, I was alarmed to find six cylinder engine blocks, which clearly take longer than your average spare part to rust away poking out of piles of steering racks, chassis parts, body tubs and what have you. The place looked like a veritable goldmine for anyone doing a restoration job.

I came dead clean with the owner. I explained that I had never done a restoration job before, but did have 20 years experience of keeping old cars on the road. He couldn’t quite hide the, ‘go away sonny’ look but patiently explained that it would be best to go for something tatty by original, i.e. not got at by a succession of enthusiastic and well meaning wielders of aluminium mesh, pop rivets and filler paste. My subsequent experience has proved that this exceedingly sound advice indeed. He pointed towards a very sad looking MkII which certainly looked like it needed a good home.

The Brooklands book contains several articles which offer, ‘what to look for’ advice, but this MkII had not got many of the ‘what to look for’ bits to look for as most of them had already returned to mother nature. I enquired as to why it looked a bit down in one corner. He casually explained that its chassis had gone (I gasped) but that there was a good chassis down in the yard and I could have one with the car. Had I known then what I know now I would have invited him to talk cash over a cup of coffee. In my innocence however I convinced myself that I would be foolish to buy the first car I’d seen and so thanked him for his time and sped homeward in the trusty Ford Escort. It immediately complained that it didn’t know the way home form Leighton Buzzard and I was obliged to get the map out and drive the damn thing.

The trusty Escort. Beige and in poverty ‘Popular Plus’ specification.

Perusing the now well dog-eared Exchange & Mart during the next week I realised that British Sports Car Spares lives on Goldhawk Road, only a stones throw from Sheperd’s Bush. A lunchtime visit and a wave of the plastic provided me with a catalogue of GT6 MkIII spares and a copy of Lindsay Porter and Peter Williams’ ‘Guide to Purchase and DIY Restoration, Spitfire, GT6, Vitesse and Herald’. This was the first time I’d seen this excellent publication and I was so impressed that that I bought it without hesitation. I opened the pages and there it was, pictures of idiots like me doing with these cars just what I wanted to do with one! The following evenings were spent pouring over the book and I soon felt that I was beginning to know the GT6 quite well even though I’d hardly even set eyes on one.

One day whist shopping in Evesham I decided, on the spur of the moment to put a WANTED ad in the local paper. This seemed unlikely to bear any fruit as I’d never clapped eyes on a GT6 in our area, but it was cheap enough and so I thought it was worth a try. The paper is published every Friday and I was working over that weekend. Imagine then, my surprise when on Saturday afternoon I got a phone call from my wife Angela to say that a chap living only a couple of miles away had rung in response to my ad with a MkIII to sell. I rang him immediately and arranged to look the car over on the Tuesday, my next day off.

Taken just outside our driveway in 1989. An excited son sits in the drivers seat not realising he would be through school, college, several jobs and my first trip to Australia by the time he would see it back on the road again!

At the agreed time I presented myself at the sellers house. The car, a french blue early MKIII with rotoflex driveshafts and no overdrive was parked in the garage with its offside rear wheel jacked up. There appeared to be no one about and no one answered my ring on the front doorbell. I decided therefore to take the opportunity of having a look around the car on my own.

It looked superficially quite good, it had obviously been ‘restored’ several years ago with a ‘quickie’ paint job and some new carpets. and was starting to need attention again. The absence of a wheel afford the opportunity to have a gander at the chassis and rear end bits. I was on my back poking about underneath and just beginning to enjoy myself when a shadow appeared in the garage doorway. I extracted my self as speedily as possible and looked up to find a very startled fatherly looking gent who politely enquired what the devil I was doing grovelling about in his garage. I explained the arrangement I had made presumably with his son and his concerned look disappeared immediately.  He was about to put the wheel back on and go to the local village garage to pump up the tyres. His son was not at home but if I wanted to assist replacing the wheel I could accompany him to the garage, I would be very welcome. Needless to say I accepted.

The trip to the garage was uneventful. The engine started instantly and sounded cheerful enough, with a touch of top end rattle that my studies had told me to expect from a high milage car. I was careful not to put my feet through the holes in the footwell, or even comment about them. At the garage while Dad busied himself with the airline I lifted the bonnet, which was rusty here and there, and gazed at the works. The underseal and blue engine paint had obviously been applied at the time of the car’s previous ‘restoration’ and were now looking very forlorn and neglected. There was rust and general decay in evidence, it needed heaps of love and attention, which I was quite willing to offer it.

I arranged to return after lunch with a few tools to give the car a full look over. He parked it on the small piece of ground between the garage and the house so that I could easily get at things. I then spent the best part of two hours with my blunt instrument, magnet and checklist and he left me in peace to get on with it. Those two hours revealed much although much more would be revealed later! The good news was that the sills had been replaced and the job reasonably well done, the bad news was that the the floor behind the seats , the boot floor, the wheel arches, the roof edge above the windscreen, the footwells…. The biggest plus was that the car was complete.

Hiding many horrors that took years of effort to fix.

Two days later, on the 25th  March 1989 I test drove the car, agreed a price and took it home. My youngest son, Sandy, came with me. I parked it in the driveway and we got out and looked at it. NAR 650L . ‘What do you think of it?’ I asked. ‘Noisey And Rough’ he replied. ‘I will call it Bluey’ I said. Now to get to work.

Read Part 2