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Some folk will recognise a lot of this from another board but I've been asked to add the pictures here.
A little background history:
About 13 years ago I bought a genuine but poorly (as I know now) restored Mexico. It had had a lot of work done with new inner and outer wings, secondhand bonnet, new front panel. Being a custom pack car it should have been Ermine White with red pinstripe but was Diamond White with blue Mexico stripes badly fitted. I knew it would never make a concours car though. I still liked it and quite by coincidence the dealer I bought it from was the furthest it had strayed from the supplying dealer in its life.
It was supplied new by Peterborough Motors to a gentleman living in Belmesthorpe near Stamford. It has a Rutland registration.
This is what it looked like after a bit of tlc including all new suspension and steering and more than one bout with the mig welder:
Funny - that looks like my signature block
Anyway over time she slowly got to the point of needing some TLC and Charlie Chisholm initially agreed to take her on.
Unfortunately Charlie was unable to do the work in the end and so I went to see Mark Anniston at Canada Motorsport in North Walsham. He looked at the shell and basically condemned it! I wasn't that surprised but I now had a whole heap of panels and no shell
Anyway I asked a couple of folk and also realised that Mark had a shell for sale - looked kind of scabby but was familiar territiory to me as it is a heavy duty service shell
I've had a heavy duty service shell on a car before:
Anyway it had one or two bits that needed sorting including the boot floor. This what that looked like after soda blasting and etch primer.
Anyway Mark then worked his magic on the shell. It needed two new floorpans, a front panel (which Mark supplied), a pair of wings (I bought those a couple of years ago for £300 - oh for another pair at that price) and a rear scuttle as the bootlid had been jemmied open at one stage
It has ended up looking like this:
There is some fabulous fabrication in there described by one bodyshop (the guy painting it) as "f***ing gorgeous" and by another as having wrecked a perfectly good shell.
Anyway I'll pop back shortly and post a few more pictures.
A little background history:
About 13 years ago I bought a genuine but poorly (as I know now) restored Mexico. It had had a lot of work done with new inner and outer wings, secondhand bonnet, new front panel. Being a custom pack car it should have been Ermine White with red pinstripe but was Diamond White with blue Mexico stripes badly fitted. I knew it would never make a concours car though. I still liked it and quite by coincidence the dealer I bought it from was the furthest it had strayed from the supplying dealer in its life.
It was supplied new by Peterborough Motors to a gentleman living in Belmesthorpe near Stamford. It has a Rutland registration.
This is what it looked like after a bit of tlc including all new suspension and steering and more than one bout with the mig welder:
Funny - that looks like my signature block
Anyway over time she slowly got to the point of needing some TLC and Charlie Chisholm initially agreed to take her on.
Unfortunately Charlie was unable to do the work in the end and so I went to see Mark Anniston at Canada Motorsport in North Walsham. He looked at the shell and basically condemned it! I wasn't that surprised but I now had a whole heap of panels and no shell
Anyway I asked a couple of folk and also realised that Mark had a shell for sale - looked kind of scabby but was familiar territiory to me as it is a heavy duty service shell
I've had a heavy duty service shell on a car before:
Anyway it had one or two bits that needed sorting including the boot floor. This what that looked like after soda blasting and etch primer.
Anyway Mark then worked his magic on the shell. It needed two new floorpans, a front panel (which Mark supplied), a pair of wings (I bought those a couple of years ago for £300 - oh for another pair at that price) and a rear scuttle as the bootlid had been jemmied open at one stage
It has ended up looking like this:
There is some fabulous fabrication in there described by one bodyshop (the guy painting it) as "f***ing gorgeous" and by another as having wrecked a perfectly good shell.
Anyway I'll pop back shortly and post a few more pictures.
And yes it is genuine.
This is nice, part alloy panelled with the bodyshop having let in new sections to the alloy panels all properly welded in place. These guys know what they are doing and are damn good.
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