Gilbert Michaelson
Keeping traditional bodywork skills alive
Visitors to both the PC Restoration and Classic Motor Shows at the NEC will recognise Michael ‘Mikey’ Coman and Steve Gilbertson as the faces of the Restoration Theatre where they share their years of coachbuilding, bodywork, and paint experience. Specialising in metalwork and paint, the quality of their workmanship is second to none, as a visit to their Wakefield workshops proves. Take the super-early Morris Minor tourer in for total body restoration.
Mikey and Steve used the original floors and sills as templates to create a set of panels perfectly matched to the originals, which have been welded in such that you cannot see what’s new and what’s old. The Lancia Fulvia Sport (main image) has had replacement wing, sill and rear arch sections made from scratch and painstakingly welded, then panel beaten so that only the smallest skim of filler is required to restore Zagato’s original lines. Located in a former factory building, the pair have amassed some impressive equipment to allow perfection to be achieved within a timescale that budgets allow. Wheeling machines and shrinker stretchers are dwarfed by the enormous Pullmax, which PC’S Matt Tomkins will be returning to use to press louvres into his Austin Seven’s panels very soon, while a set of slip rolls and numerous hand tools ensure that any panel made in a factory press can be perfectly recreated during a restoration. In for paint when we visited was a Rolls Royce Silver Shadow, Alfa Romeo Giulia Sprint GT and in a unit next door for completion of mechanical work sits a 1947 Ford, which the guys completed some impressive custom metalwork on, including a roof chop. The only limit to what they can create is imagination.
CONTACT gilbert- michaelson.co.uk