KITS AND PIECES
THE NAME—HE JUST SOUNDS LIKE A CAR DESIGNER
Ferris de Joux has been a hero of mine from the moment I took an interest in New Zealand–built cars. It appears that just about everybody involved in the homebuilt car industry either knew him personally, had met him, or had at least heard of him.
My introduction to the de Joux name was when Almac Cars in Upper Hutt was called on to repair a damaged de Joux Mini body. The de Joux Mini was one of those ‘what if’ cars. Ferris designed it in the hope that British Leyland would put the car into production as a Mini with a sports car flair. After seeing the drawings and prototype, Leyland New Zealand seriously considered producing it at its assembly plant in the Hutt Valley. However, parent company British Leyland was not interested, so plans for mass production were shelved.
I couldn’t help but ask myself, what if British Leyland had gone ahead with the attractive little coupé? Would New Zealand local car manufacturing have been any different if we had put our own unique car on the world stage? Despite this rejection, Ferris went ahead and manufactured the car himself, selling it as a kit from 1969 through to 1972. In total, 20 cars were made before production stopped.
Over the years, I heard of other cars that Ferris had designed — some were mass produced and some were one-offs. When I started writing my book about New Zealand–designed cars, Ferris was one of the people that I earmarked to interview. In 2008, I found him by using the white pages of the Auckland phone directory. Fortunately, there were only a couple of F de Jouxs listed. I spent a morning with him late in 2008, when he dragged out his photo albums and told me a lot of stories about some of the legends that he himself had met. In 2009, I spoke to Ferris one final time, on the telephone, about some corrections that he wanted me to make to my story. The changes were made, Ferris said that it was a good effort, and it is with great sadness that I must report he passed away only a month later.
Not so much a replica as an interpretation
Besides learning about all the cars that he had mass produced, I also got to see photographs of his one-off projects, which included several boats and a bus. Then he showed me a car that he was currently working on in conjunction with Neil Fraser of Fraser Cars. It was his own interpretation of a 1960s Ferrari 250 GTO, having removed all the features that he thought spoiled its looks — for example, the triple holes in the front nose cone and the recesses behind the rear wheels. Ferris did not build the body to be a replica of the GTO; instead, it was what he thought the GTO should have been, had anybody asked him for his input. During the interview, he asked me if I wanted to buy the car,
as he did not really have the energy to finish the project. However, knowing full well how much development work was going to be required to complete such a car from the ground up, and not having the skill set required, I declined.
His Ferrari GTO was one of my favourite cars, and I always wondered what happened to it. Then, about a year later, I rediscovered the car on Trade Me. The pictures of it were the same that Ferris had shown me back in 2008, so I suspected that little or no progress had been made.
Ian Johansen, of Stoke, near Nelson, had finished a ground-up restoration of a Triumph TR2 a year or so before and was looking for another project. Kit cars were another interest of his and, when he heard of the Constructors Car Club show that was held in Porirua during 2013, his interest was sufficiently piqued to buy an aeroplane ticket to the North Island. Wandering around the cars, he was very impressed with what people had been able to build in their garages.
Apart from a few tweaks to the motor, Ian’s Triumph TR2 had been fully restored to the factory specification. The challenge of the restoration had been reproducing original panels and finding rare parts to ensure a good resale value, should he ever decide to part with it. Doing a period-correct restoration has both advantages and disadvantages. The main advantage is that it will retain its collector desirability. The main disadvantage is that the TR2 had 1950s drum brakes and engine technology, not necessarily a good thing on modern New Zealand roads.
The benefit of building a kit car over a classic was that Ian would not be tied to any specific donor car or offend any purists if he changed too many details. Plus, a jigsaw puzzle is a lot more challenging if you don’t have a photograph of all the pieces in place — and it’s even more challenging if you don’t have all the pieces! All he needed was a starting point. He saw the de Joux GTO advertised on Trade Me and decided that he had to have it. By this time, the GTO was in Whangarei in the care Shagun Vasey, who had, with the help of his
father-in-law Wallace Mcnair (a good friend of Ferris), negotiated the purchase of the car from another mate, Laurie Poolman, who had worked on the Mini de Joux (did you follow that?). Laurie knew that he would not have the time to finish the car to the degree it deserved and was happy to pass the project on to Ian.
Rather than a kit car, a box of bits and pieces
The GTO was shipped to Nelson as not much more than a rolling chassis. The body had been temporarily attached to the chassis, and, packed around the body, were the moulds used to manufacture it. The rear transaxle and gearbox were from an Alfa Romeo. The exterior body was complete with bonnet and boot lid, but there were no outer door skins — fortunately, the car came with the doorskin moulds. Ian quickly realized that this was not a kit car; instead, it was a partially completed, one-off special.
Littered around the country, and in many landfills, are project cars that were never completed. There are even more hiding in garages, under dust covers, or under boxes of junk. Many will have changed hands several times, and, with each change of hands, the likelihood of completion diminishes. But the GTO has changed hands for the last time — Ian will one day be driving this car.
Problems to solve
There is a lot of work involved in building a one-off car from scratch. The body is one of the hardest parts to get right and involves many man-hours to construct the plug. Ferris got it right, and Ian has the moulds should he ever want a second one. Next comes the chassis design, which must be rigid and strong enough to absorb the power output of the motor without twisting or flexing. Again, this was not a problem for Ferris, as he had many years’ experience building race cars. After this, comes a multitude of small decisions that need to be made, such as where to mount the battery, what wiper system can be used, and where the fuel tank should
be mounted. Although he had tackled these many times before, Ferris died before solving them for this car. When people buy a kit car, all the design work has been done — not so with a one-off special. What Ian had was a jigsaw without all the pieces.
Those who take on these projects are very special people. Each hurdle they come to is simply an engineering problem to be solved, and there is always a solution. Although Ian will not admit it, it does not take me long to realize that he is one of these special people. Since the car’s arrival, he has committed to doing at least one thing every day on the car — whether it is something as small as fitting a single bolt somewhere, or locating a part that needs to be imported from the US. Ian is fully aware that this is going to be a big project. He spent 2017 acquiring parts and working out how to fit them.
And things to do
There was no interior with the GTO — Ferris hadn’t got that far before his death. All Ian had was a body attached to a tubular space-frame chassis and a lot of development work ahead of him. The front wishbones were in the wrong place and would require repositioning/remaking. The engine mounts, steering, pedal box, door hinges, etc., would all have to be designed and constructed. And as there was no interior, everything would need to be constructed, including the seats, steering system and dash panel. The bones of the chassis had been completed, but it was going to need a host of modifications before any forward progress could be made.
When Ian bought the car, it came complete with a Lexus 4.2-litre V8 temporarily mounted in position so that he could work out how to route the steering column to connect to, most probably, a reproduction Ford Escort or Cortina rack and pinion.
Ian is very positive about the project and is clearly enjoying the challenge. This year has been spent building the parts that he cannot acquire. Ferris was not a big man by any stretch of the imagination, and Ian has found the cockpit to be very small for a person of more reasonable middle-aged proportions, so he is narrowing the transmission tunnel to create more space. Instead of a mechanical handbrake system, the car will have an electrical one, which will be turned off and on by a switch, giving even more interior room. Not surprisingly, it is very hard to find seats that will fit in the space, so Ian has designed and manufactured his own seat frames. The steel wheels are currently in the process of being replaced with custom-made, and more period-correct, wire wheels.
Ian is understandably very cagey about a completion date, as he still has a lot of alterations to make before he can claim that he is making significant progress. However, one thing I can be sure of is that the number of days between when I interview him and the time you read this, will equal the number of steps Ian is closer to finishing the car.
The benefit of building a kit car over a classic was that Ian would not be tied to any specific donor car or offend any purists if he changed too many details