FRIENDS PAINT IT FORWARD FOR SPECIAL GUY
Vancouver car painter who helped dozens of hobbyists gets big ‘Mini’ payback
Good deeds don’t go unrecognized in the collector car hobby. So it was when a group of friends and enthusiasts gathered at the unveiling of perfectly restored 1970 Mini Cooper in racing livery.
It was very similar to the car veteran auto painter Peter Taylor bought new, three years after coming to Vancouver from England back in the 1960s. He drove his 1966 Cooper S as his regular car for a short time and then turned it into a racer. He was a serious competitor at the Westwood Race Track for 10 years. But, with marriage and the arrival of four children, the Cooper S was parked and eventually sold.
In his early years, the journeyman refinisher worked on Vancouver’s docks, painting new cars that were damaged from hooks used to lift vehicles out ship holds.
“I would paint 30 to 40 cars a day,” he recalls. “Often, I would paint a car every 20 minutes, all day long.”
He subsequently painted cars for Mercedes-Benz-North Vancouver for 30 years before retiring. Throughout his working years and in retirement, Taylor has painted hundreds of hobby cars ranging from full Concours restorations to vintage racers.
“I just loved doing it. I get to see the finished product and have always enjoyed that,” he says.
One of the top restored vehicles he put the finishing coats on is Peter Trant’s 1933 McLaughlin Buick Victoria coupe painted in two shades of maroon.
“Peter Taylor has helped so many people over the years and asks for little in return,” Trant says.
Trant, who taught shop teachers at the British Columbia Institute of Technology for more than 40 years, was comparing notes with current instructor Randy Schultz who also had his widened TR3 meticulously prepped and painted by Taylor. The two enthusiasts decided it was payback time for the painter.
Along with fellow enthusiast Jim Brown, whose vintage Austin Healey 3000 was painted by Taylor, they acquired an Austin “Mini” body and a pile of donated parts and set out to pay tribute to their friend’s original Cooper S from nearly half a century ago.
“All we had was one photo of that car,” Schultz says.
Peter Trant built the balanced engine out of a pile of donated pieces. Performance enhancements were added, including a Cooper 295 head, a performance cam, twin carburetors, exhaust headers, raised compression ratio and a lightened flywheel.
“I think the engine now puts out about 70 horsepower compared to the original 50,” he says.
The deception began when they decided that none other than Taylor should be the one to put the Ferrari Red paint job on the car.
“I told him I was building the car for a client and needed an expert to paint it,” Schultz says. “After Peter painted the car, it took longer than expected to reassemble the car so I had to continue the lies.”
In reality, Taylor was never going to get paid for painting his own car so Schultz invented a story about the car’s owner being a retired teacher who met a woman while touring Argentina and decided to stay an extra month. Typical of Taylor putting money last, he didn’t question the story.
“The surprise would probably have been given away if we had Peter paint the roof silver, as was his original race car, so we asked friend and painter Rob Pybus to do that part,” Schultz says.
And so the deception continued. Wanting to give Taylor the car at a Sunday celebration held in the BCIT shop, Schultz asked him to come over to give an opinion on a problem paint job for another client.
“Peter was there looking at the car with his name and original racing number 66 on it for almost 15 minutes without realizing we had built the tribute to his original Cooper S to give to him,” Trant says. “It wasn’t until I asked him what he was going to do with the car that he finally realized it was his.”
Astonished is the word to describe Taylor’s reaction when it finally sank in that the three craftsmen had put their own work aside for four months to complete a Concours-quality restoration of a tribute to his old race car. Many others donated parts, paint, assistance and money. All their names are on an underhood plaque commemorating the car build. To further personalize the car, Peter Taylor Special 2018 is engraved on the custom aluminum horn button.
“The horn actually works,” Schultz says with a smile.
Before taking the wheel for an inaugural drive in his new car, Taylor still seemed dazed and struggling to comprehend what was happening.
“It’s absolutely incredible. I can’t believe it. All these people, the generosity I never dreamt of. I didn’t think I deserved it,” the 73-year-old said.
“Peter has done something for everybody he knows,” says fellow painter Pybus, who also buffed out the paint job laid on by his friend who had no idea the car would be his. “It’s doing something nice for someone nice.”