After half a century of ownership, Delwyn Mallett’s Pre-a hits the road
When Delwyn Mallett dragged the rusting remains of a 1952 Porsche 356 home behind his father’s VW Golf he was confident his new project would be on the road in three months. In fact, it would be almost half a century before the supercharged Le Mans-inspired coupé took to the road in its final form
There can be few early Porsches which have had such a long history in the hands of one owner, which began life as a rusty wreck, has been rebuilt, stolen, rediscovered, wrecked, rebuilt again and, as a final flourish, supercharged. To put it simply, you couldn’t make it up, for the tale of Delwyn Mallett’s famous – or maybe infamous – ‘Streamliner’ is one that makes you smile, weep and possibly even shake your head in disbelief that one car and its owner could experience such a mix of pleasure and pain over a period of almost five decades.
Delwyn takes up the tale: ‘I cannot adequately explain why it took 28 years to restore a motorcar in the first place. Just as I cannot adequately explain why anyone should even want to go to the expense and bother of prolonging the life of a grossly outdated piece of machinery! During the time that it took to get UXY 70 back on the road, I’ve moved house three times, and had a child who has grown up, gone to university and left home. Close friends within the Porsche world have married, divorced, died, emigrated, grown old and one has even changed sex…’
The car in question, a 1952 Pre-a coupé, wasn’t the
first Porsche Delwyn owned, as he already had what he describes as ‘a Speedster or two’, and prior to that he’d been the custodian of a 356A coupé. But with British weather being what it is, he had the yearning to own another coupé to sit alongside the two Speedsters. Oh, and before you think ‘Two Speedsters! Wow! How much did they cost?’ be aware that this was back in the days when you could pick up an old Porsche for a song – in the case of one of the Speedsters at least, just £300…
Around 1970, early Porsches really did have little value, being regarded by many as oddball
Volkswagens with a fancy body. Arguably, that wasn’t too far from the truth, says Delwyn, when one considers the engine and running gear were largely Vw-derived. But to the cognoscenti, those first Porsches were far more, having proved themselves on the race track, even at Le Mans, and were an engineer and stylist’s delight. Just such a shame they rusted almost as you stood and looked at them.
His fascination with Porsches began many years previously: ‘I had an obsessive admiration for that most exotic of all Porsche designs, the pre-war Autounion Grand Prix car. Ownership of a P-wagen was
the stuff of dreams, of course, so my attention turned to something more attainable, which also eliminated the 1939 Berlin-rome cars! Next up were the Gmünd-built Porsches, of which 50 had been made, so the odds were getting a little better and, in 1971, I got a lead on one that had surfaced in Sweden. The owner wanted £750 – and I turned it down! To put this apparent act of utter stupidity into context, the car was described as ‘having no salvageable ferrous content’ in the chassis.’
Reality meant that Delwyn had to spread his net a little further, hopefully to catch one of the split-screen coupés that followed on the heels of the Gmünd cars. But again, it was no easy task tracking one of these down, even back then.
‘There were only two or three splits around at that time. Betty Haig, stalwart of the HSCC and a founder member of the Porsche Club GB, had restored an 1100cc coupé, now owned by Porsche Cars UK, (a car which, years earlier, I had rejected on the grounds that it was too old!),’ says Delwyn. ‘Another had been “updated” by being sprayed in the then fashionable shade of Porsche Bahama Yellow. I say this to help explain why I eventually ended up buying UXY 70, of which a more rusty and bent example of a Porsche it would have been hard to find.’
Unsurprisingly, Delwyn’s initial euphoria at tracking down a suitable car began to wain when friends, who had been press-ganged into helping him extract it from a lock-up garage and load it on a rickety trailer, suggested that a) he was mad and b) it would never run. ‘Smarting from their verbal harassment and definitely on the defensive, I boldly predicted that it would be “On the road in three months”. What’s even more ludicrous is that I genuinely believed it!’
Filled with the enthusiasm that only a person who’s never taken on the full restoration of an old Porsche can possess, he began to attack the Pre-a with gusto, first attempting to remove the many layers of paint. Nitromors, then the industry standard for stripping paint from bare metal, had little or no effect, so Delwyn called on his father to tackle the task with a welding torch, purchased with the intention of carrying out the repairs necessary to restore the car to rude health. Yes, the gas torch did indeed remove the paint, but at the same time it removed all traces of lead from the body seams and filled the garage with noxious fumes.
It was obvious that the task of welding the underside of the Porsche was beyond the capabilities of its new owner, so a couple of mechanic friends were called in to do some moonlighting, working on the car after hours. However, the enormity of the task soon dawned on them and, as Delwyn recalls, ‘They just stopped answering their phones – in fact, they probably moved out of the area altogether!’ But there was one brief
moment of amusement when he discovered a brand new pair of number plates among the stash of parts that came with the car, ‘which suggested that the previous owner had started out with the same unrealistic optimism as me, before sanity prevailed and he bailed out. If only I had been so decisive…’.
It was becoming increasingly evident that the services of a professional were called for, if the car was ever to see the road again. ‘A young, and talented chap who was about to start his own business came and surveyed my project and announced, in the timehonoured fashion of all restorers “What man has made man can make again”. Adding that it would take about a year to complete. Four times as long as my estimate but still not bad, I thought. If only I’d known,’ says Delwyn. ‘Off came most of the outer body panels (remember they are seamlessly welded together) and eventually the roof, too, parted company with its underpinnings! My old gal had rust where no one had seen rust before. The floor was rusty, the doors were rusty, the gutters were rusty, the screen pillars were rusty – even the rust was rusty!’
It was clear that the car had suffered not inconsiderable accident damage in its past, for the rear end showed evidence of an impact (a recurring theme, as it later transpired), as did the front. ‘Fortunately I was in possession of a genuine factory front panel, complete with sidelight holes in the “wrong” position, ie, directly under the headlamps rather than slightly inboard, but this suited my emerging plan for the car, so the holes remained where they were. I had, by now, decided that restoring UXY 70 to factory specs was beyond my patience and pocket, and my hot-rodding instincts came to the fore.’
The original roof was swapped for that of a later ‘bent-screen’ 356 with a steel sunroof, which has caused a degree of head scratching over the years as the cognoscenti try to work out what year the car really is. However, inspiration for the new-look Pre-a came principally from the Le Mans ‘streamliners’ that competed at Le Sarthe in 1951. Delwyn blew up numerous photos on his work’s photocopier, allowing him to to study the wheel spats and louvered rear quarter ‘windows’ in detail. His new restorer enjoyed this part of the project, scratch-building aluminium panels, but soon the novelty wore off and the ill-fated coupé got moved onto the back burner, where it languished for no fewer than eight more years!
The barely half-built car now moved to a third restorer who did at least get the car repaired and repainted. But it was still devoid of engine, brakes and electrics, and a full interior. Having run out of energy, Delwyn pushed the car into his garage and shut the door for a year or three. And then, spurred on by the
thought of attending the first Aircool Day at Brooklands, which Delwyn was helping to organise, work began again in earnest. First to come to rescue was Richard Morena, ace electrician who installed the new wiring loom Delwyn had purchased sometime in the past. Then began a week of frantic action, as the author and the car’s owner worked long hours to get the coupé mobile once again.
As the original 1300cc engine was in a hundred pieces, a ‘spare’ 1600 Porsche engine was temporarily installed (‘temporarily’ means, in this case, for the next 20 years) to allow the car to move under its own steam (not a particularly apt choice of words, really, but you get the idea…) for the first time in almost three decades. Finally, the time came to start it up, except it wouldn’t, meaning we had to resort to a tow-rope and the Mallett family VW Golf. With Mallett at the wheel of the tow car, yours truly at the wheel of the 356, the coupé was persuaded to cough into life. Smiles all round, celebratory cup of tea and then get ready for its first showing.
The slippery-looking ‘streamliner’ spent the next decade or so seeing occasional use, visiting shows and scaring small children (it was quite loud, thanks to an old glass-pack ‘silencer’) before one fateful day it was stolen from outside Del’s house. Who on earth would have wanted to steal the car, we’ll never know, as it was well known and instantly recognisable, yet not so perfect that it would likely end up in some unscrupulous Oligarch’s secret museum.
Amazingly, the car reappeared a few days later, hidden under a dust sheet in a garage complex a few miles away. It’s unclear how it ended up there but it’s quite likely that the perpetrators hid the car and watched to see if it had been fitted with a tracking device of some kind before whisking it away. As it turned out, the strange car lurking in the corner of the parking lot aroused the interest of a local dog walker, who then called the Police.
To add to the actionpacked story, just a couple of years later the coupé was involved in a freak accident, which saw it rearended with sufficient force to not only damage the rear bodywork, but also the rear quarters and roof pillars. To add insult to injury, the impact at the rear pushed the car into some stone steps. This was clearly going to need the expertise of a skilled Porsche metalworker to put right, and the chosen person was Steve Kerti of Classic Fabrications, whose workshops are located at Dunkerswell, near Honiton in Devon.
Never one to miss an opportunity to add complexity
“THE TIME CAME TO START IT UP, EXCEPT IT WOULDN’T…”
to any situation, Delwyn decided that rather than simply (in relative terms) repairing the damage, why not use this as the starting point for a whole new transformation, taking the Le Mans-inspired project to a whole new level? Like supercharging the original 1300 two-piece crankcase engine, changing the colour, installing a new interior and, well, you get the idea. But first, it was necessary to repair the damage.
It didn’t take long for Steve Kerti to discover that the damage extended far beyond a bent rear panel and a bruised nose. The impact had distorted the majority of the rear end, damage extending as far forward as both quarter panels, the roof pillars and all the inner panels surrounding the engine bay.
Worse still, years of sitting in less than perfect storage had meant that water had gathered inside the car, which then evaporated and condensed inside the single-skin roof. This resulted in a layer of rust that silently munched away, reducing the thickness of the roof panel, out of sight behind the headlining.
Now Steve is not one to let such trifles deter him, and almost casually told the car’s owner that it would be easier and quicker to make replacement panels from scratch, rather than attempt to carry out localised repairs, or buy in incorrect and often ill-fitting repair panels. Mallett gulped at the prospect, but bowed to experience and stood by as his little coupé was reduced to a skeleton.
To watch Steve at work is to leave you spellbound, as he turns a flat sheet of steel into a curvaceous masterpiece using old-school skills. An English wheel, a tree stump and a mallet and leather bag are seemingly all he needs to create exact reproductions of the complex panels stamped out by presses almost 70 years ago. If you want to watch him in action, head to his Facebook page‘ stevek er ti classic fabrications’ where you’ll find a number of videos, including ones showing Steve working on this very car.
There isn’t enough room here to go into minute detail about the work carried out to transform the battered and bruised body into what you see before you on these pages, but suffice to say, hundreds of hours were spent straightening, repairing, replacing and prepping the bodywork in readiness for paint.
Ah yes, the paint. That’s a story in itself. When delivered to Steve, the car bore a three-decade-old coat of pale metallic blue. Very nice it looked, too (if you ignored the micro-blistering and rust bubbles), but Delwyn’s tastes had now changed – to grey. A very specific shade of grey, rather than the 49 other shades.
Every journey became a game of ‘spot the grey car’ – have you noticed how popular this colour is these days? In the end, it came down to either a grey used on BMW Minis (‘too mushroomy’) or Skoda Octavias (‘perfect – and it keeps it in the family. Sort of…’). So Skoda grey it was. Even then, after a week or two of overthinking the project, doubt began to creep in, but fortunately Mr Mallett was persuaded it was the perfect choice for this exercise in Bauhaus minimalism on wheels.
When it came to the interior, Delwyn had some off the wall ideas: ‘I wanted to dispense with the heavy original seats but didn’t want to use “Speedster” buckets as they are out of period. I had tubular-steel framed seats in mind and contemplated modifying early Citroen 2CV seats, but then decided to rely on Steve’s fabrication skills again and have him make a pair from scratch. Some of my all time favourite cars are the amazing 1939/40 Mille Miglia BMW 328s and at Essen one year I photographed their seats and blew up the photos for Steve to use as reference.
‘After a bit of trial and error and several fitting sessions to establish the height and rake, the finished frames were painted to match the car and sent to Guy Broom at West Country Trimmers, Bovey Tracey, for the “suspended” upholstery to be fabricated and attached. Skeletal they might look but they are surprisingly comfortable. The only slight inconvenience is getting over the side rails rather than just sliding in. Guy also did a terrific job trimming the rest of car, including the headlining, door panels and carpets, and displayed admirable patience despite my repeated procrastination!’ As a finishing touch in line with the overall minimalist approach, a three-spoke VW ‘standard’ steering wheel was painted and installed.
But what of the mechanical underpinnings of such a beast? Common sense might have suggested refreshing
“THIS EXERCISE IN BAUHAUS MINIMALISM ON WHEELS…”
the later 1600 engine for reliability and improved performance, but that would have been too easy.
Far too easy. Delwyn had always had the urge to run a supercharger on the Streamliner, as the car is now almost universally called, and after the author tracked down a Judson blower for sale in the USA, the urge never went away. Del takes up the tale: ‘When I bought the car it came with a 1300cc engine dismantled in various boxes, and at about the same time I also bought a dismantled 1500cc engine. They both sat gathering dust in the roof of my garage for the next thirty-odd years.
‘I had also acquired the Judson supercharger and sundries with the objective of supercharging the 1300cc engine. Given that the Judson was designed for a singlecarb Beetle engine, the obvious problem was what to do about the inlet manifold. The Porsche’s twin carb arrangement meant that nothing could be made to fit, while a Beetle inlet manifold wouldn’t match up to the Porsche cylinder heads. I was contemplating fabricating a manifold from scratch when a friend pointed out that the 356 industrial engines used a single carb mounted on a very neat alloy manifold. That was one problem solved.
‘Without much hope that this jumble of bits might go together and actually run, I dumped it all on Steve and told him to do his best. Much to my amazement not long after, a video arrived on my computer of the Judsonequipped motor chugging away on an engine stand!
‘All seemed good until it came time to fit it in the car: it was too tall by far. Various solutions were considered, but not wanting to cut away the inside tray of the original deck lid, I opted to go the expensive route: make a new one in aluminium. In theory, this would also compensate, slightly, for the extra weight at the rear of the car. The engine now fits – just – allowing the engine lid to close, but there was no room for the Judson air filter. Steve took this minor setback in his stride and simply fabricated a new one out of aluminium sheet…’
Steve Kerti also modified an exhaust, making two new tailpipes out of stainless steel, which curve down to clear the much lower rear ‘body bumper’. Test drives showed that carb icing kept causing the car to stall. This was cured by tapping a small pipe into the heater box to divert warm air up to the single Solex carburettor.
The car was now ready for the road – again – almost 50 years since it first came into Delwyn Mallett’s possession. Its first public outing was at the Porsche KG event at Goodwood last summer, where it won universal admiration from all and favourable comment from master outlaw builder himself, Rod Emory.
But after all this work, the tears of joy and frustration in almost equal measure, what does the owner think of the end result? ‘It looks a million dollars but, as I always dreaded, cosmetic enhancement doesn’t disguise the fact that underneath it all it’s still a 1952 Porsche, with a non-synchro gearbox, meaning changes need a certain delicacy of touch to avoid grating the gears. I have to admit, that’s not always achieved…
‘As for performance, I’m pretty sure that, as I always predicted, the supercharged engine is probably producing no more horsepower than the standard engine. However, I’ve recently spotted that it’s not getting full throttle at the moment.’ Let’s call it work in progress, then. But let’s just hope it doesn’t take another 50 years to address the final teething troubles of this work of mobile art.