MARK FISHPOOL NORTHAMPTONSHIRE
Retired builder Mark’s first car was a Ford Corsair. He remembers: ‘There was always something going wrong with it. I was only 17 and couldn’t afford to pay a garage so I had to teach myself how to fix it. A few years later I went to a car show in Stamford and that inspired me to start my first full restoration – a Bedford CF van, no less.’
Mark entrusted some of the work to professionals, only to be let down: ‘It was so frustrating that I taught myself welding, bodywork and spray painting. That was before the internet so many of my skills came from reading a Haynes manual!’
Mark was able to turn his hobby into a full-time passion when he retired, building a workshop behind his bungalow and restoring a Daimler V8 from a rolling shell, which took 2400 hours. Mark chanced upon this TR6 in 2018 several classic restoration projects later: ‘Excitingly the car came with an interesting history. It’s only had two previous owners, the second of those the son of well-known comic actor, Stanley Unwin.’
But Mark says that it was a far cry from the shape it’s in today: ‘It had been stored since 1982 and had plenty of rot. It provoked a lot of interest when it featured on the Barn Find stand at the NEC Show in 2018 with many people doubting its viability. In fairness, the last owner’s well-intentioned plans to restore it had never got started and it didn’t look pretty after 36 years in a barn.
‘I started by removing all four wings, cleaning and painting the inner structure, the chassis and the floorpans. Then I removed the seized engine and stripped and painted the under-bonnet area while I had access, retaining and refurbishing as many original parts as possible.
‘I gave the interior a good clean while the cylinder head was at Peterborough Cylinder Heads. I re-built t
