PRACTICAL CLASSICS RESTORATION SHOW CELEBRATING 10 YEARS
To celebrate a decade of the restoration show bringing together the best barn-finds, remarkable overhauls and auction stunners, David Simister looks back at some of the greatest classic cars from the event’s history
1979 FORD FIESTA
2014
Practical Classics editor Danny Hopkins summed up the show’s inaugural outing as ‘part classic show, part tutorial, part theatre and part celeb-fest’. Fittingly, its first-ever live stage resto was a classic owned by one of the magazine’s most famous former staffers – the Fiesta MkI that Vicki Butler-Henderson used to commute to our offices in! What the 11,340 visitors to that first event didn’t see were the raised eyebrows three weeks beforehand when John Simpson and Clive Jefferson discovered that FUR 33T was rather more rotten than anticipated. But in true Hollywood style the mag’s experts managed to get it up and running just before the event’s finale – much to Vicki’s delight.
1966 TVR TINA
2015
Having fought to get the Fiesta running in 2014 the Practical Classics experts upped the stakes for 2015 by resurrecting a prototype TVR Tina owned by the person after whom it’s named – Tina Marshall, daughter of late race ace Gerry. Danny Hopkins said ahead of the on-stage overhaul: ‘This is one of the most exciting projects I’ve ever encountered. Not only is it a car with a family link to a motor sport hero, it’s a beautiful design that, with a different set of circumstances, might have been a mass-produced hit. If any car ever needed finishing, this is it’. The Hillman Imp-engined coupé might have needed a bespoke windscreen and bumpers as part of the re-build but it was still finished in the nick of time for an emotional on-stage reunion of the two Tinas.
1989 AUSTIN METRO
2016
An Austin Metro whose owner restored it as a tribute to his late wife won a public vote at 2016’s show to find the nation’s favourite restored classic. James Cribb’s 1989 City model beat off some extraordinary competition from nine other cars to win the Practical Classics Restorer of the Year award, voted for by the show’s visitors.
Norman Smyth’s Jaguar E-type was runner-up while Chris Depledge’s Sunbeam Stiletto took third place. James said:
‘I had no idea it was going to win – I’d have been happy for it to come fifth or sixth, so I’m over the moon. My wife would have been so proud of it.’ It wasn’t the only show-stopping classic revival, either, with a Reliant Supervan III used on Only Fools and Horses fired up for the first time in more than 30 years on the show’s live stage.
1913 JOWETT TILLER
2017
A breathtaking restoration of the world’s oldest surviving Jowett – and the subsequent efforts by its owner to keep it in tip-top condition �
