Winter Warmers
This year’s challenge is tougher, higher, longer and Swisser than anything PC has ever attempted
Can the team get their £750 classics ready on time for Switzerland?
The PC team has been chomping at the bit for this one – the gauntlet having been laid down twelve months ago. The task, on the face of it, should have been simple. Can you get a classic car prepared and ready for extreme adventure for £750 or less? The PC team has done it before (six times), so no problem then.
But, thanks to James Walshe, a few extra little caveats had been added for this year’s outing. He had pledged to the organisers of the glamorous Swiss British Classic Car Show at Morges on Lake Geneva to come back with the team in tow. James had also noticed, amid the sparkle of Aston Martins and Bentleys, an absence of mainstream bread and butter British family cars.
One Lagonda owner suggested that the reason for this was that there were none left and if there were, they wouldn’t be capable of the journey from the UK to Switzerland.
It was a red rag to a bull… a conversation with event organiser Keith sealed it. The team would buy and prepare a British classic for less than £750 each and bring it to the show… as guests of honour. Travelling further than we’d ever been before. To the Alps to do battle with the exotica!
‘The detailers went at it hammer and tongs for two days in a row’
DANNY HOPKINS 1962 Rover P4 80 ‘Olive’
It was Monday morning, we were due to leave on Wednesday, the MOT was booked for Tuesday afternoon and the car itself was still being rebuilt. There was another complication. A month earlier, in discussion with my good chums Bert Youell and Rich March, both men of the cloth (microfibre), I had laid down a challenge to see if they could make the Rover’s paint come alive again.
Olive had lived in her garage for so long that she had ‘matted’ in big way. The boys had said yes and offered to invite their mates to lend a hand. So a team of eight good men and true were waiting at the workshop as Clive, Matt and I turned up. We made tea and a few excuses because the welding wasn’t done and I still had to hang the rear quarter panels after paint. So for the next eight hours Clive, Matt and I basically built the rear end of the car as Britain’s top detailers polished and preened the everywhere else. It was possibly the weirdest day I’ve ever spent on a classic car – especially as the detailing posse started with a deep cleanse of Olive, involving an all over shampoo. Clive stopped welding… we rolled the car outside, washed and hosed it and rolled it back in.
Tuesday dawned and the welding was complete, just seam sealing and undersealing required as the detailers plied their trade. I have to admit to having raised an eyebrow the day before. Surely you don’t need that many hands to make a motor shine… but give them their due, these gents went at it hammer and tongs for two days in a row, using top notch gloop from Scholl Concepts, and by the time the car went off to the MOT station it had been transformed. Nick, our station tester didn’t recognize it. Ten days before it had been a Rust in Peace candidate, but now it gleamed as it ticked over silently. Nick probed and examined… I sat back and took a deep breath. Olive looked absolutely perfect. There’s just something about original paint. I would so much rather have a car with a slightly patinated sheen than an over restored, two-pack, mirror finish.
It failed. Blown headlamp bulb. Remedied on site. Then suddenly I was £40 poorer and one MOT richer. I drove Olive back to the workshop where the men of the cloth lavished their Scholl Concepts wax all over her flanks. I taxed the old girl for the first time in 34 years and we all drank tea… then the shiny people were gone. I sat on the leather bench front seat and turned the key. The Land Rover four-pot burbled into life and we set sail for the south.
I didn’t mind I had lost massively already, having spent decent money on a full set of good tyres from Longstone I was about £600 over budget. I hit the A1 with hope in my heart and immediately the overdrive went pop. It wouldn’t be an easy fix. As I headed for Cambridge and home (I’d be meeting the team the following morning at 9am) at 55mph I tried to work out the precise length of time it would take me to reach Geneva. The maths part of my brain failed (again) so I came up with an approximate answer: ‘Long’. Still, we were moving, Olive and I and nothing would stop us… probably.
JAMES WALSHE 1983 Austin Ambassador
If the objective was to turn up to the show in Switzerland in a stand-out popular British classic, then what could be better than a popular British classic never sold there in the first place? In the expensive conversion from Princess to Ambassador, my big Austin may have been bestowed a tailgate but it was never engineered for left-hand drive so I figured it would be a suitably intriguing addition to the line-up at Morges.
This was no ordinary wedge, either. With just 28,000 miles on the clock, it is one of the very best preserved in existence: A Vanden Plas model – never welded – with immaculate crushed velour upholstery and that 2-litre twin carb with wafty soft autobox. Coupled with the softness of Moulton’s Hydragas suspension, if I decided to take the Ambo, I would surely win points for arriving at Lake Geneva with the most cosseted bottom.
My Ambassador had originally arrived at the PC workshop on the back of a trailer back in March, when John Simpson and I gave it a good initial prodding. I made a substantial list but reasoned it wouldn’t take much to get the car running – and certainly, it would be within the Winter Warmers budget. My plot, therefore, was hatched. This would be the car to transport me to Switzerland. After victory in my Maxi in 2015, I looked forward to being awarded maximum points and running off with the trophy for the second year running.
And then it all started to go wrong. My confidence was shattered with the realisation you can’t simply fiddle about with an engine and expect it to go. The list of parts required just kept growing. Knowing we were to be tackling hundreds of miles of French autoroute and long periods climbing Alpine passes, no chances could be taken. From new coolant hoses and fuel lines to refurbished suspension, the costs began to escalate. I don’t mind a car expiring on a mountain incline but systems failure on the way down isn’t so acceptable – therefore an entirely overhauled braking system was necessary.
Under the bonnet, we removed the head and cleaned and flushed everything until it shone like new. The new items continued to arrive by the crate-load. Alternator, fuel pump, fuel tank, thermostat housing and every gasket imaginable were all replaced. Yet still, amid all this renewal, the engine refused to run.
I therefore did what any sensible person would do: I called for help from the car cleaners and detailers. My Ambassador might be working as effectively as a pair of woollen swimming trunks, but at least it would be clean. I was fascinated to learn how we ‘barn finders’ should properly clean a car when it has been sitting inside a shed for years.
As I watched Miles Marr of FX Detailing work his magic, bringing back the shine to the Opaline
‘It became all about saving this incredible car… and our spirits’
paint, our thinking hats went back on again. No amount of tuning would make the engine run properly – all the usual procedures weren’t working and despite working into the night, Tomkins conceded defeat. So I took a deep breath and sold the Maxi, raising the funds needed to call for specialist assistance.
This had become much more than an effort to win a contest. It was about saving this incredible car and our spirits from failure. It turns out, combining the clever minds of Tomkins and BL enthusiast Andrew Mcadam, breakthroughs occur. After much, much head scratching, the notoriously useless ASU system – the automatic choke – was thrown in the bin. With a little tuning, plus a new fuel pump, the car ran perfectly. But after a quarter of a century locked away in a dusty garage, would the
SAM GLOVER 1996 Rodacar Maestro
I traditionally use the PC Winter Challenge as an excuse to import something unloved and orange from eastern Europe. This year, thought, this was impossible for two reasons. Firstly, the rules cruelly prohibited it. Secondly, I was broke. The latter also prevented me from buying something from the British left-field and lying about what I spent on it.
After a long period of sulking, I realised that I already owned a perfect vehicle. To the uninitiated, my Rodacar Maestro looks just like an unexotic product of Cowley – and many of its component parts are, indeed, unexotic products of Cowley. However, it had the benefit of having been assembled in Varna, Bulgaria, and could thus claim to be more Bulgarian than British. I felt this qualified it as a suitably subversive entry. The Rodacar also needed a purpose in life, having mouldered untouched and unregistered since speeding home from Bavaria in 2013. It remained in fundamentally exceptional condition, having covered less than 10,000 miles from new.
A textbook light recommissioning elevated it to perfect fettle. It received a brake master cylinder, rear wheel cylinders, caliper seals, brake pads, flexi-hoses, fuel hoses, a fuel pump, a fuel filter, a few coolant hoses and a thermostat. The cooling and fuel systems were purged of ooze and flotsam, all fluids were replenished and various parts were smeared with lubricants. The carburettor, ignition timing and valve clearances were already set perfectly, having clearly not been interfered with since the factory. I retrospectively completed a NOVA application, falsifying the date of import to avoid a fine. An MOT was secured and a registration application submitted. The DVLA rejected it on petty grounds, but reaccepted it when I appeased their pedantry. Dignified number plates were supplied post-haste by numberplates-4-u.co.uk and attached a few days before departure. Success is assured. For once, I think this really might be true.
MATT GEORGE & MATT TOMKINS 1989 Rover 216S
MG: Hands up, Tomkins and myself plumped for the sensible and stress-free option when finding a car to (hopefully) get us to Switzerland. With Matt dedicating time to preparing the worthy steeds of Messrs Hopkins and Walshe, and myself still feeling the financial pinch after a recent house purchase, we scoured the internet for a suitable candidate to go halves on. Ideally one that required minimum preparation and wouldn’t break our collective bank.
A £500 Rover P6 sounded great initially, but the new cover sills over a rusty base unit put both of us off… I don’t think poor Matt could face yet more welding! We needed something that just worked – which is where ‘Hyacinth’ came into the equation. Cherished by the original owner between 1989 and 2013, the boxy 216S hadn’t seen much use in the past year, but fitted the bill perfectly. Mere minutes after spotting the ad online, Tomkins was on the phone to the seller and haggling the £625 asking price down to £450. We headed down to Highgate with a bundle of notes that same evening.
Bloody good the car was, too. The drive home did highlight a few issues, however. ‘The brakes are a bit iffy’, reported Matt, ‘and, err, the cigarette lighter socket doesn’t work. Back in the workshop, the muddy old brake fluid was drained and replaced with fresh stuff, with the engine oil and filter also being replaced. Matt traced the cigarette lighter issue to a blown fuse – a replacement restored operation and allowed us to power up our Sat Nav for the big trip. A fresh MOT was secured without problems, a £3 wiper blade being all that was required. Two tyres were advised as being cracked/ aged, so we splashed out another £80 on a pair of Falken 165/80R13 HS435 winter boots, with the Swiss mountain passes in mind.
The final ‘issue’ to sort was the non-functioning radio – this was due to a missing security code. I solved this in the form of an original Rover unit found online for a tenner. Successfully wired for sound, all that was left to do was give the car a thorough clean inside and out, then she was ready for the biggest trip of her life.