G4 heading for the road again after 45 years
Ginetta Owners’ Club registrar Trevor Pyman was recently set a conundrum by club member Terry Piner, who was looking for a Ginetta G4 to buy and had heard of one that had been in storage in Manchester for 40 years. After a lot of haggling he was able to purchase DAK 101C, which was largely complete, although missing its original engine and dashboard. The bodywork had an obvious repair to the front and it is thought that it has had four owners, although only two were registered.
Piner was able to get in touch with the person who built the car from a kit, after being given it as a 21st-birthday present. Then the widow of another owner contacted him; her husband had owned it in 1967 and had crashed it into a lamp-post. She sent a newspaper cutting of the damage and a photo of the car being built from a kit.
This seemed strange, because it had been built from a kit two years earlier, but Pyman was able to solve the mystery using factory records. They told him that in 1968 a G4 square-tube chassis and body had been sold to the same person in Lancashire who was recorded as the owner of the damaged car; the engine and dashboard must have been transferred, but the suspension could not be moved over because the original had a roundtube chassis and the two were not compatible. “In the 45-plus years since it happened, the crashed car has remained virtually untouched,” said Pyman. “Terry has a G4 that has barely seen two years of use!” Restoration is now well under way.
‘The widow of one owner said her husband had crashed the G4 into a lamp-post’