FIESTA XR2
It’s a long-held dream for many to track down and buy back their first car. And thanks to a few quirks of fate, James Tetherton was able to do precisely that…
Reunited with a first car via Bangers & Cash.
We’ve all done it. The DVLA stalking to idly investigate the status of cars we’ve owned in the past — a quick vehicle check can see whether the car in question is taxed and on the road, and an MoT check might give an idea of what sort of condition it’s in.
Sometimes it’s good news but often it’s bad; cars wink out of existence, and with them go our wistful fantasies of ever reconnecting with our former automotive sweethearts.
It must be the case for almost every petrolhead out there that the idea of tracking down and buying back that first car is an increasingly attractive idea as the years go by. For most of us, it’s an impossible dream. But for James Tetherton, this XR2 came back into his life in a most improbable way.
Early doors
It all started in fairytale style back in 1997. This 1982 Fiesta had originally been purchased by a retired housewife in Spalding,
who was less interested in the sporting credentials than in having ‘the poshest Fiesta, in a nice colour’. Over the next decade the car enjoyed gentle use, covering 40,000 miles and returning to the main dealer for servicing every year — the dealer sticker remains in the rear window to this day. When she passed away in the early 1990s, her husband laid up the XR2 in the garage, covered in dust-sheets.
Come 1997, and after a number of years of gentle persuasion, James’s dad convinced the owner to sell it to him, presenting the Fiesta to James as his first car. “At the time, it was immaculate,” he recalls, “and only required gentle recommissioning to ready it for regular use. I kept the XR2 until September 2003, and took the mileage up to about 90,000; it carried me to sixth form, to university, and then followed me to London for my first job — where it was promptly broken into! By then it was a fairly tired old car, and I eventually sold it for £500 and bought something newer to replace it.”
For a lot of people, that’s where the story would end, and a couple of decades down the line they’d be ripe for pub-based ribbing along the lines of ‘Mate, you should have kept that, think what it’d be worth now…’. But as fate smiled on James, the perky little Ford was essentially hanging on a celestial rubber band, ready to ping back into his reality at some stage or another.
Many hands
So what of the car’s life after he sold it? Well, as was the way with then-cheap old Fiestas, it passed through a few hands before ultimately arriving in the care of an owner who set about righting a few wrongs; the body received some restoration work to chase out the creeping rot, and the engine was upgraded to add a few go-faster bits. When this owner decided to sell, he arranged to enter it into an auction at Mathewsons, and this is where the plot twist starts to reveal itself.
Mathewsons, as you may be aware, features in a TV show by the name of Bangers & Cash, showcasing classics with interesting stories that go under the hammer to find enthusiastic new owners. As it happens, James’s brother, Neil, is in the motor trade, and when the listing was advertised he instantly recognised the registration number and let James know straight away.
“It came at an interesting time,” he recalls. “Neil spotted the XR2 a few months after our father passed away. Dad left me his beloved Jaguar XJ-S when he died, and back when I had the XR2 in my teen years, the Fiesta and the XJ-S were always parked together. So the idea of reuniting them, and buying back the car that held so many memories of youth, was a very attractive one.”
Unfortunately, despite the glossy sheen of television’s dream-weaving, the XR2 wasn’t quite as brilliant as it seemed. It only took a quick drive to realise the engine was in a bad way; at first James assumed it was just lack of use and stale fuel, and simply needed a tune-up — but a trip to a local garage
“THE XR2 CARRIED ME TO SCHOOL AND FOLLOWED ME TO LONDON FOR MY FIRST JOB WHERE IT GOT BROKEN INTO”
highlighted that something more serious was afoot. Having read a Classic Ford feature a little while back about a 105E prepared by Kejja Motorsport, James got in touch with Kevin at Kejja to assess the options.
Bad way
“Kevin took it apart and found broken piston rings on three cylinders, among various other problems,” he says. “It was quite worn and knackered inside. So he suggested two options: the cheaper route would be to rebuild it all properly to standard XR2 specs… or the more fun idea was to build it into the sort of engine I’d have dreamed of when I was 17.” No-brainer really, isn’t it? And so the focus of the project was clear – a fast-road screamer, with standard looks and properly engineered upgrades under the skin.
The engine still boasts its original 771M block, but the spec is now on a whole other level of exhilaration (see right), with every single bolt and fixing replaced. And the rest of the car has been reassessed and reimagined with devastating efficiency, taking an evolutionary rather than revolutionary approach. The suspension was upgraded to Bilstein dampers and H&R springs, with new top mounts and a full polybushing throughout, while the brakes now run cross-drilled and grooved discs, EBC Green Stuff pads and custom braided lines. Usability was the aim, and the result is a proper back-street tearaway in the old-school style.
“What followed turned into a 12-month restoration, and now it drives beautifully and always puts a smile on my face — it’s like being 17 again,” James beams. And while the car gets a lot of ‘Hey, that’s the Bangers & Cash XR2’ at shows, there’s been so much work involved between that point and this one.
Final touches
“It looked very shiny at auction, and there were masses of receipts for work that had been done,” says James. “Things had been done reasonably well, but… well, I wanted to focus on the mechanical side of things, but there were some cosmetics we had to address too. After the last respray it had had a weird spoiler thing fitted ahead of the sunroof, so that had to go and the roof was repainted again. Now it’s at the stage where it’s very presentable, but there are a few things that could be addressed — adjusting fitment of the front wings and so on. But then it could get to a point of chasing a concours finish, and that would mean it wasn’t usable as a fun car, and that’s really the point of it.” Indeed, the ethos of it now is just what a 17-year-old would want; James’s mates certainly remember it that way and love what it’s become in its second life. He’s achieved the unachievable and bought back his first car – and it’s even better than his teenage self could ever have dreamed of.
“I COULD CHASE A CONCOURS FINISH BUT THAT WOULD MEAN IT WASN’T USABLE AS A FUN CAR, AND THAT’S THE POINT OF IT”