RESTORING & ENJOYING Shed Hero
Tom Horner is only 25 but has already built a surprising collection. Mind you, his shed is bigger than most…
A dynamic mix of classics hidden among the shipping containers.
Tom Horner runs a family business that performs all manner of steel fabrication, engineering, blasting and boatbuilding jobs. This seems to have had two effects on Tom: firstly, a hobby that’s been with him since childhood has been able to overflow now and then into the vast workshop, and secondly, it’s given him a unique sense of perspective: if you’re used to people welding up corroded oil rigs or 40-foot trawlers, fixing a rusty old car doesn’t seem so daunting. That’s not to say Tom has dragged home every old wreck that was offered to him. He’s able to show his reasoning behind every purchase, which makes it all the more surprising
that his collection now includes a pre-war taxi, a 280bhp Audi Quattro and a Fordson diesel tractor re-engined with a 9-litre V8… among other things. How did that happen, then?
Ex-tractor fan
Tom has been car-mad all his life, although his first vehicle was an open-topped, off-road single-seater. Well, a tractor actually. He was 16 at the time, and the collecting gene started to express itself straight away. ‘I had six tractors at one point,’ he says. ‘I used to do a lot of steam rallies, but of
course you have to tow them to get them there and back. So I started looking at old cars…i’d been keen on newer cars and modern classics, but the first properly old thing I considered was an Austin 7.’
At this point Tom’s daily transport had been a series of recent, rather sporty offerings from the Vw-audi Group. Climbing out of a high-specification turbodiesel and into an Austin 7 made the baby Austin’s shortcomings rather obvious.
‘I wanted something bigger and a bit more capable, so I went looking for a larger pre-war saloon. I’d formed an idea about building a small wedding-hire fleet, and you couldn’t really call an Austin 7 bride-friendly.’
In late 2011 Tom found a 1948 Alvis TA14 Mulliner saloon in Goole, Lincolnshire. The TA was Alvis’s first post-war model but it shared a good deal with the 12/70 of the 1930s, not least the pillar-of-society image and the fine engineering. Best of all, it was large enough for four real adults and it wasn’t expensive. A no-brainer, then?
‘Knowing what I know now, I’d never have bought it,’ says Tom. ‘To start with, the sunroof blew off on the A64 on the way back up to Middlesbrough. I stopped and bought some string to tie it back on. It was still pretty draughty and the car had no heater, so it was freezing…this was November.’
Further inspection back at home revealed a solid chassis, but wings missing their beading and signs of rust in places you’d rather not find it – inner wings and wheel arches. Tom knew the car’s paint was too poor to leave, so he’d banked on getting it refinished by a friend with a restoration business. This friend, Malcolm Hall of Hall’s Motor Body Works, had been bringing project cars to Tom’s place for blasting and Tom knew the high standards Malcolm was used to achieving. So Malcolm’s down-to-earth assessment when Tom showed him the car caused a frown.
‘Rather than saying “Yes, that’s no problem Tom, we can paint that”, he said “You strip it and shotblast it and we’ll see what’s left.”’
Thankfully Tom’s blasting facilities allow substrates more forgiving than small shot to be
used. Blasting with beads and soda leaves more fragile original material in place while still cleaning all the rust off. Not that the rear wings had any rust – they turned out to be made of GRP.
‘We also found some hairy pink glassfibre filler in the front wings that was still soft in the middle,’ says Tom. ‘Then, when we bought a used inner front wing, it was worse than the one we already had, so Malcolm’s guys made one. The car went to him for a month and it ended up taking three.’ The paint choice had to be right for wedding use, but Tom chose a more versatile maroon over Old English White. With the inside re-trimmed by another local pal, Martin at Traditions Upholstery, it was down to Tom to give the Alvis a good service, cure a grouchy clutch release bearing, fit reliable electronic ignition, sort out the much-bodged wiring and bring the brakes up to scratch. ‘The Alvis was finished in May 2013, but by then I’d got myself distracted with something else,’ says Tom.
Black cab, white wedding?
While Tom was busy with the Alvis, he decided to aim high and went to look at a Thirties Rolls-royce 20-25 saloon. It was in a poor state, but since the vendor thought he could break it for £15,000, the sale price wasn’t low enough to tempt Tom. But… on the same site, Tom saw an Austin Heavy 12/4 taxi bodied by Goode & Cooper of Brixton in 1937. ‘It had been stored in a barn in the Sixties, then sold in the
‘The rear wings weren’t rusty – they turned out to be made of GRP’
Seventies, part-restored by a Bentley mechanic but never finished, and it ended up with this dealer about 75 per cent done. So I trailered it home.’
Tom had to renew the running boards, fit the lights and get Malcolm Hall to see to the paint, but at least this one was a solid base for the final finish.
How would the two classics fare as wedding transport? Well, Tom’s idea worked to some extent, but old cars can be relied upon to act their age when it’s least convenient. The realities of running even a small hire fleet persuaded Tom that occasional weekend work, more as a hobby than a job, was the way to go. Perhaps there was another reason…one that had more to do with his latest obsession.
Vorsprung durch disappointment
If you have a glance at Tom’s car CV (page 26) you’ll see how Audis have been a continuing theme. There’s a reason for this. Back in his teens, Tom used to help out in his uncle’s garage, a business that sold and repaired VAG vehicles. The car that made the greatest impression on Tom was an Audi ur-quattro with the engine from an S2 – quite a weapon, but by the time Tom was in a position to own such a car, long gone.
Spool onwards to 2014 and Tom went shopping again. For £2200 you couldn’t find a scrapped Ur-quattro but you could buy a slightly bubbly 1991 S2 Quattro. A dream realised? Not quite.
‘I ended up spending more on it than the Alvis,’ says Tom. ‘I started by finding a new rear subframe, but then found more rot elsewhere and it ended up needing two new sills, two wings and a re-spray.’
It got worse. One day, Tom was tidying up the engine bay and discovered a sheared cylinder head bolt. He saw this as an excuse to do things properly, so out came engine, gearbox, subframe, suspension arms and more for a complete rebuild, with powder coat and new bushes applied to the dangly bits.
‘The first time I started it, there was no oil pressure. One of the disadvantages of using our workshops was all the airborne debris… the engine was full of blasting grit.’ So, one more rebuild later, the car now has a new crankshaft, forged rods, polished and ported head and a new turbo.
As if to prove that each project has to be as different as possible from the last, Tom turns out not to be an ex-tractor fan at all. His latest endeavours are a pair of Fordson Diesel Majors, one a very smart 1958 model with an original Boughton timber winch and the other, well… it’s not quite finished yet. But the tricky part is over – Tom has successfully spliced the back half of the tractor to a V8 Perkins 540 diesel as used in Dennis fire engines and Massey combine harvesters.
So if you’re ever on an industrial estate in Middlesbrough and you see a smartly-dressed young man popping wheelies on a mutant vintage tractor, you’ll know who it is.