Mark,

It was spotted a few years ago and was undergoing some kind of restoration. Do you have any more pictures of when you owned the car?Rich.

Rich,

I will have some tucked away in the family photos ‘shoe boxes’. They will take some finding.

I bought this vehicle from a work colleague who I haven’t seen in years but still get a Christmas card. I think he acquired it from Germany in about 1959. He will be interested in all this.

Long before these became collectors cars we were thinking of ways of removing that centre spoke of the split rear window, sacrilege now. He fitted the larger engine with twin pipes and converted the cable brakes to hydraulic.

With my first son on the way and Harold Wilson’s pay freeze, the Austin Healey had to go and I bought the Beetle. I replaced the worn out crash box trans-axle with a syncro unit which was not as easy as advised. I also dropped the road wheels down to 15″ to meet an available Pirrelli tyre. I was working at Astons at the time and fitted a DB5 steering wheel. All this the kiss of death to a current day restorer I am sure.

The last I saw of it, Quartermaster at the Angel, a good source of Spitfire parts, had camouflaged it in some pseudo Waffen SS livery with a rear mounted Jerry can!!

It gave good day to day service for a number of years when times were on the hard side.

Mark