Our classics
There was a certain inevitability about this Lancia Flaminia Berlina returning to the Buckley fold. I last saw it 25 or maybe even 26 years ago in a north London back-street, looking tired but not hugely different from the car I had collected from its previous owner five years before that.
Having holed a piston running up the M6 to Manchester, I was responsible for the spiral of decline the car had ended up in as it went to one well-meaning but optimistic custodian after another. Previous experience tells me I am likely to add my name to the list of people whose eyes were bigger than their bellies when it came to taking on EJJ 87J as a project, but I do feel strangely compelled to save the car now I have met it again in person. It rekindles fond memories.
When I tracked down the saloon this summer it was about to become a parts car for a better right-handdrive Berlina, although it’s hard to determine exactly what it could usefully have donated.
So, what have I taken on? The good news is that it is complete and comes with a rust-free set of doors. The engine can be persuaded to fire up (my pal Jamie coaxed it briefly to splutter into life) and I am assuming it’s the same lump I helped my friend Dermot to fit outside my dad’s house in the early 1990s.
The Lancia’s interior is pretty much as I remember it and, apart from sun damage on the rear squab, just needs a clean. I have already removed it from the car to put into storage. I never thought the brightred vinyl went with the light-blue body but, because it is one of the few plus points of the car, I’m more inclined to change the outside paint colour than undertake a retrim in the grey wool it came with from the factory in 1961. I’m favouring, at the moment, Newmarket Grey with a black roof.
The mainly stainless brightwork and the glass are all good, and the instrumentation and switchgear are complete. The debit list is shorter but more fundamental, rust being the main issue – both structural and superficial, although the car is not quite falling in half.
Briefly, all four arches are rusty, with filler popping out. The front floors are frilly and the bottom of the grille nacelle would fall off with
a sharp kick, as would most of the sills on both sides of the car.
That the doors are trashed is not an issue because I have the spares, so I’ve already removed them along with the bumpers and most of the trim. There is even a thumbnailsized rust hole in the roof, but the real sticking point is the subframe, which forward of the engine is very fragile and needs to be replaced.
I know I can buy a new subframe for £3500, or a good secondhand one for about a grand, but if anyone has a cheaper option then I’m all ears. Getting a set of wheels shotblasted and painted, and the airbox and vacuum tank powder-coated, was a morale-boosting diversion tactic, but useful nonetheless.
In a similar vein I have removed the fuel tank, taken out the radiator and doused the sticking exterior doorhandles in WD40 to free up the buttons. And that seems to have done the trick for now.
To really get the ball rolling I decided to strip off the paint, or what is left of it. Years living under plastic tarpaulins had rubbed it through to the primer in several places and bird poo has finished the job on the roof. Even so it was a tedious job, made harder by the fact that over-the-counter paint-stripper is pretty tame stuff these days.
As I write, the Flaminia is ready to go off and have the heavy-duty fabrication and welding work done. On the basis of a set of graphic photographs I sent over of all the worst bits, I have been given a very favourable quote for getting the car solid again – although the man in question might just decide to take early retirement when he sees poor old EJJ in the metal.
It’s 65 years since the HWM, in its previous Alta-engined life, was a Hollywood star alongside Kirk Douglas in The Racers. It has faced the cameras again in a new series called Three Men, Four Wheels.
In each of the 10 half-hour programmes Drew Pritchard (Also in my garage, July 2020), Andy Jaye and Marino Franchitti will look at, and drive, one great car – from Bugatti Type 35 to Jaguar XJ220, from Formula One Lotus 72 to 8.2-litre Willys dragster.
And, would you believe, they wanted the Stovebolt to kick off the television series. Presenters and crew spent a long day in my garden shooting the car and probing its make-up, its history and its details. Then they wanted to film it in action on a racing circuit.
That caused a teeth-sucking moment. In 20 years no one has driven the Stovebolt except me, apart from trusted fettler Sean Mcclurg. The idea of somebody else having a play with it felt like a stranger asking your partner out on an overnight date.
But Marino’s a good mate, and his credentials are impeccable: Sebring 12 Hours winner, six Le Mans starts, British GT Champion, and also a brilliant historic racer in everything from Cobra to Birdcage Maserati. I’m not on the same planet when it comes to driving talent (and he promised not to go over eight-tenths). So we agreed that only Marino would drive the car, and the production company insured it at my valuation.
The chosen venue was the picturesque little Anglesey track in north Wales, overlooking the Irish Sea. It’s not the friendliest place if the weather is bad, but happily it was fine. On the day, sadly, I couldn’t go, so Sean trailered it there, watched over it, and called me when the session was done to say everything had gone well.
Then Marino called, bubbling over with enthusiasm. He waxed lyrical over the Stovebolt’s character, and its power and torque in such a small package. He reckoned its handling took some getting used to, but he absolutely loved it. He wouldn’t tell me much more: “Just watch the programme.”
I certainly will. I haven’t seen it yet, but it’s streaming on the justlaunched discovery+ service from 2 January (discoveryplus.co.uk).
Wilf Stacey, painter and master craftsman extraordinaire, has a very pragmatic view on restoring classic cars: it’s either right or wrong. And, because he likes to be reassured, he is constantly asking me: “What side of the dial is the needle on, right or wrong?” It has become a standing a joke, so much so that whenever a box of shiny new parts turns up at his workshop, the immediate question is, “What side is the needle on?” Sadly, more often than not it is on the wrong side…
It’s not because we have designs on a Pebble Beach win, simply a desire to do the job properly. It helps that Wilf doesn’t comprehend the phrase ‘that’ll do’ and, without wishing to get on a soapbox, we have encountered more than our fair share of ‘skullbodgery’ (items that are close to the original, but plainly not) upon reassembling my mum’s Spitfire.
I’ve known this car since I was 10 years old, when she picked it up brand-new from the dealer, so I know every detail and whether something is correct or not. Take the rubber boot seal: the original item is a dark foam covered in rubber; the replacement from any given specialist is solid rubber. It looks okay and fits the aperture, but there is no compliance in the material whatsoever, so the bootlid is fastened under extreme tension.
The Triumph Spitfire was massproduced so there are lots of ’em, but because they were cheap and cheerful I get the distinct impression that going the extra yard to make sure a new part is an exacting replica is tempered by cost and availability. When we stripped the shell, we found the dash pad was torn. No worries, we thought, a replacement is available. Except it isn’t a replacement: it’s a capping with the wrong grain that sticks 90% of the way over the top of the old one. Although Wilf wanted “the people from the Repair Shop” to mend it, he’s done a brilliant job of rescuing the original himself.
Yet saving every single part hasn’t been possible, and we have had to make a few compromises. The dash surround on the MKIII, for instance, was covered in a thin injection-moulded plastic that, being glued to the metal, was never going to survive being removed. Ours certainly didn’t, and is now in five pieces. Most specialists offer a fabric to cut to shape and apply over the metal. Because, again, the grain isn’t correct, I’ve elected to leave the dash frame in body colour, like the earlier cars. Being black, it shouldn’t be too much of a distraction. It sounds petty, but if it was the ex-jane Fonda Cal Spider, rather than the ex-dorothy Balme Spitfire, there would be all sorts of discussion on internet forums as to why it hadn’t been done properly.
If you needed further evidence of the lengths we’ve gone to in restoring this car, before final assembly began Wilf decided he needed a ‘clean room’. Taking a well earned rest from the Spitfire following my previous report, he proceeded to build himself a room within his barn that is cleaner than most restaurant kitchens. There’s another much-used phrase about ‘if you want a job doing properly, then do it yourself ’. In Wilf Stacey, I’ve definitely met my match.
With the body now secured to the chassis and the bonnet in place it feels as if we are on the finishing straight, though after the briefest enquiry regarding carpeting I can see it’s not going to be without further tribulations. All I want is carpets the same as were there when I first got into the car in 1967… Is that too much to ask?