GEORGE NICOLAS

George Nicolas is a fan of rare vehicles, owning the one-of-a-kind Aston Martin Project Vantage prototype featured in C&SC in September 2017. He’s also well versed in putting cars back on the road. “I imported the Bricklin from California three years ago, sight unseen, from a specialist,” he explains. “All the rubber bits needed replacing and it took a while to get it running. It needed a new carburettor, but it was surprisingly together. I was quite lucky with it: sometimes you get a basketcase, but it was all pretty much there.

“The bits that matter are the body and interior – the rest is pretty much AMC, with a Ford engine and gearbox. Some parts are off the shelf, some aren’t: I bought some AMC Hornet calipers, which had the wrong fitting so I had to have the originals rebuilt.”

“It took three or four months to get it registered and on the road, and it’s since given me tonnes of grief,” laughs Nicolas. “It threw a radiator hose on a really cold night in February and I ended up waiting seven or eight hours for a tow truck. The doors are a constant delight – you need to run the car to generate the air pressure for them to function, and if it’s been sitting for a while it doesn’t want to play. I had them converted to operate via remote as well, which is quite good fun – it’s a nice little party piece to pop the doors up from a way away.”

“The size of the air intake is also a design flaw,” says Nicolas. “The big V8 produces quite a bit of heat; pootling around town isn’t too much of a problem, it’s when you’re on the open road and you’re using the revs that it heats up and you have to slow down – maybe another built-in safety feature!”