Apprentice of the year, Billy Strutt
20-year-old winner of Apprentice of the Year in the 2020 Historic Motoring Awards
at 6am and have a quick shower and some breakfast and then head straight to work at P&A Wood. It is about 30-45 minutes away from my home in Chelmsford and we start at 8am, but I like go get there up to half-an-hour earlier and think through the day and how it is going to go and what I am going to do.
I have been there for four years now, having started when I left school at 16, straight after my GCSEs. I always knew what I wanted to do and, when all my friends were worrying about A-levels or colleges or jobs, I was already planning and applying. We have loads of brilliant classic car specialists round here and I would have leapt at the chance to join any of them, but P&A Wood was always my first choice. We actually went to P&A Wood for an open day when I was seven years old on a trip arranged by the Alfa Romeo Owners’ Club and pretty much from then on I told everyone that I was going to work there someday.
The other thing was that my grandad, Brian Whale, proper pushed me. He worked for Shell and always regretted not being able to take a job at Rolls-Royce due to his family situation when it was offered. He was the start of the car thing in our family and it’s still going strong. We’ve always had cars to work on: when I was 13 my dad Darren bought me my own 1996 Fiat Cinquecento to learn on. I ended up more or less fully restoring that Fiat and still have it. As a family we are really into Alfa Romeos and have a couple of 155s, while my current daily is a Mito, which replaced a Fiat Panda 100hp, and I want my next everyday car to be a 147 GTA.
Anyway, I applied to P&A Wood a month before my exams and came down for an interview, then a week’s trial and then a final interview, before starting in September 2017.
At work I am in the post-war department, which means we look after cars from the early 1940s to the late 1960s. I have been doing a little bit of servicing work, and can get called on to help with a brake bleed or an oil change at any time, but since the day I arrived I have mainly been helping to rebuild a 1953 R-Type Continental. In the past couple of months we’ve got it on the road and there is light at the end of the tunnel, which is really exciting. Spending so long working on one and learning everything about it means an R-Type Continental would be my first choice as a classic car, but my dream car is a Ferrari F40.
We have a break in the morning, lunch, and then another break in the afternoon before finishing at 5pm and tidying up ahead of heading home at 5.30pm. The thing with the apprenticeship, though, is that every six or eight weeks or so I have a week’s block release at the Heritage Skills Academy at Bicester. There, we start a bit later on a Monday, and finish a bit earlier on a Friday, to give people a chance to get there and get home, but otherwise the days are 9am to 5.30pm.
While I am at Bicester I do the college side and also collect the information for my portfolio work to show I am using the skills I am learning. It’s a mix of theory and practical and can be a real eye-opener because everyone on the course is doing such diverse things. It really broadens your horizons about the cars and the industry as a whole. It’s a fantastic
‘I HAVE BEEN DOING SERVICING WORK, AND CAN GET CALLED ON TO HELP WITH A BRAKE BLEED OR AN OIL CHANGE AT ANY TIME’
experience and you learn loads and, of course, it is all paid for by your employer.
I am just into my final year – I will finish in August – and that means I’m at the point where you tend to start to specialise a bit more from the basic mechanical skills.
My preference is working on chassis systems with my supervisor at P&A Wood, Nick Wright. I would really like to help with a full engine rebuild, and I wouldn’t mind going into trim or bodywork, but they don’t interest me quite as much as what I do now, which is all the rolling car stuff such as drivetrain, suspension, brakes and so on.
Because I still live with my folks, I get back to a home-cooked meal. I tend to go to the gym three nights a week and might go out with my girlfriend on a Friday, but all my spare time at weekends is taken up with working on cars – not least the 155 we’re turning into a racer.
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