Me and My Resto Wolseley 1100 film-star revival.
The revival of Emily Cook’s 1966 Wolseley 1100 was a plot with a lot of rot... and a happy ending
Ididn’t set out to buy ‘Maggie’. At the time, I had an Austin 1300 that I loved. But when this came up for sale on the Ado16.info club’s Facebook page, I couldn’t resist going to have a look. My boyfriend Tom Morris and I drove down with a trailer hitched ‘just in case’. I fell in love straight away, so despite both headlights dropping out when Tom shut the door, we ended up coming home with her.
She’s known as Maggie after being featured in the film The Lady in the Van starring Maggie Smith – and can even be found on the internet movie car database (IMCDB). Maggie didn’t look too bad on film; she’d been tidied up cosmetically, but there was plenty wrong beneath the surface.
We started work just before Christmas 2018 and the project quickly escalated.
The driver’s side front wing was completely rotten, so Tom started by cutting it off before tackling the inner wing rot that was revealed. We then bare-metalled the front panel and passenger-side front wing, and Tom spent many happy hours repairing rot in the wings, floors and sills. He fabricated most of the panels required himself, while I took a rotary wire brush to the underside, removing years of flaking under seal.
While I wasn’t working on the car, I went on a parts-buying mission, sourcing a NOS drivers wing via the Ado16.info group and a set of Vanden Plas seats from ebay to replace the tatty and torn Reef Blue originals. That gave Tom another headache, as the brackets were totally different and we had to rely on photographs and guesswork to make our own seat bases.
As Tom finished each bit of welding, I followed him round with a tin of Hammerite, inside and out, in an attempt to protect his hard work for many years to come. A leaking rear screen turned out to be caused by a hole beneath the rubber, so with the screen removed, Tom tickled that with the MIG before the glass could be refitted.
Photographs I’d posted online of the restoration caught the attention of the Ado16.info club and we were asked to display Maggie on its display stand at the Practical Classics Classic Car and Restoration Show in March 2019. The plan was to have her there as a project, but the logistics of getting her to the NEC dictated that we ended up pushing to get her roadworthy before the show.
We repainted the front end and the whole Trafalgar Blue lower section, refitted chromework and put on a set of freshly powder-coated MKI wheels with fresh rubber to replace the incorrect MKII wheels fitted when we bought the car.
We applied sound-deadening pads to the floor, then I adapted a new carpet set to fit around the VP seat bases. With time ticking before the show, Tom’s brother Ethan came down to lend a hand. By the week of the show we were really pushing, working till midnight the night before set-up day to get the car roadworthy.
The road to showtime
After the mammoth effort, we were pleased to be able to drive her to the show, where I stripped all the engine’s ancillaries before cleaning and painting the block and detailing the rest of the bay. While I was doing that, Tom was adjusting the rear pitch springs in an attempt to correct the Hydrolastic ride height, which now just needs a few pumps with a ‘Dalek’ to perfect.
We also gave the engine a full service with new plugs, leads, oil and filter change and a hose set. Then I went into the trade stands and came back with a shiny new rocker cover that sets off the engine bay nicely.
We’re nearly at a point now that we’re happy with the car – my mum and I fitted the headlining the evening before the photoshoot for this article – and just plan on enjoying using it for now. Maybe one day she’ll get a full respray – but for now, to me, she’s perfect.