Lost & found
Reader Tony Carter from York recently unearthed an intriguing hoard of classics owned by ‘Jim’, a 70-year-old Scot who spent his working life as a construction engineer based in the Yorkshire Dales. A true car lover, Jim never had the money to buy classics complete, so over the years he has collected 18 unrestored and unloved projects, and at least five motorcycles.
Leading off the living room in his 18th-century cottage is a workshop full of British and Japanese motorbikes, with a 1948 Alvis TA14 saloon to one side buried beneath household goods. Nearby there is a 1928 Dodge Standard Six, which came from Uruguay in 1989 as a runner and was driven around the village green before going into storage. Just outside in a lean-to is a 1927 Dodge tourer that came from Australia in 1989 as a failed project and is now undergoing restoration.
Some 15 miles away, Jim also has a store packed with 14 cars, some stacked two high on makeshift shelves. To see those at the back, Jim has to stand on his Jensen C-V8 – a car he bought via ebay some years ago for £1000. Its Chrysler
V8 engine was missing some ancillaries, which he has now acquired along with a Jaguar V12 and auto ’box as a possible replacement. Jim is no purist, but simply wants to get the cars back on the road.
The collection includes no fewer than four Reliant Scimitar GTES. “There was a period when you could pick up a rough Scimitar for £300,” says Jim. “The separate chassis makes it a good candidate for building specials, so I bought three for that purpose. The fourth was my main car from 1986-’97, fitted with a Rover V8 and a fivespeed ’box.” One chassis was to be shortened and fitted with a Cobra replica body he had been given.
Several years ago, Jim acquired some glassfibre panels for a Jaguar XK150: “It is not an Aristocat body, but a one-off set commissioned many years ago.” There is also a complete, unused set of panels for a 1960 Edwards Brothers (EB) shell, originally designed for the Ford 10 chassis, which Jim intends to fit to a Triumph Herald frame.
A rusty-looking c1960 Austinhealey ‘Frogeye’ Sprite, bought dismantled in Liverpool a decade
ago, still has its original steel bonnet, while a Riley RMA that he purchased in the early ’90s is being buried beneath other cars. A pair of 1946 saloons, a Rover 10 and an Austin, were acquired in 1979 for £40 each from a coal merchant in Dumbarton, Jim’s home town.
WRW 210 is a 1958 Hillman convertible, similar to one he had when he was a student. From 1962 it was owned by a George Hillman (no relation), who died soon after and his wife Mollie kept it on the road as a memorial to her husband. Jim bought the car – which still had an MOT – in 2004: “It was a lovely and heart-warming story.” He also has a 1969 Hillman New Minx, bought from the West Midlands.
Jim has a thing about finding quality hide for the cars he intends to rebuild, so he buys old sofas from which he has rescued the leather, which is stored on the back of the 1927 Dodge. The wood from the sofas is cut up to warm the house in a wood-burning stove.
So far, just one car has been restored, a 1951 AC Buckland that he bought in 2008: “The wet-liner engine was in bits, so I opted for a Rover SD1 2300 unit to get the car mobile.” Although the AC now lives outside due to a lack of storage, none of the cars are for sale.