READER’S STORY
'I made most of it myself'
Jeremy Evans’s 1948 CB Jowett Bradford Special is just that, truly special
This started out as a Bradford van, but over the years it lost 90 per cent of its bodywork. All the mechanical bits were there though. So, I did what any petrolhead romantic would do. I rescued it. The chap who owned it had about twenty Jowetts and had to cut back, but I did question my own sanity as I shoved all the bits into my estate car. I spread it all out at home and it didn’t get better. It looked like it had been dropped from a helicopter!
I’d had Jowetts when I was a teenager, all projects and none of them running. They were just a bit odd and weird, and I liked that, I liked the slightly quirky engineering. When I went to university I sold them and it’s taken me a few years to get back into doing them properly again, and obviously, this time I have finished one. The Bradford is a really simple vehicle, built for making deliveries around town, nothing fancy about it, so it is perfect for making a special. This one’s mechanically standard, but the bodywork? Well, that’s all my own creation.
I started off with a vision for a trials special, but I soon realised that wasn’t possible because of the layout of the chassis. I wanted it to look like a Jowett, not too bizarre, and decided I could quite easily make a Short Two body. I talked to people in the club and various people took measurements of their cars for me. Apart from the steel front wings, which are from a motorcycle, there were no off-the-shelf parts, I made everything you can see. It was a question of buying planks of Ash for the frame and sheets of Aluminium and going from there. I’ve made virtually everything, even the windscreen frame, which is composite laminated pieces of aluminium. The bonnet was quite difficult so there’s a little rippling (I don’t have an English wheel or anything fancy) but it worked in the end.
It’s definitely the kind of project you can lose yourself in. Although I'd restored some other cars, a lot of this was new to me – testing what you can and can’t do is what it’s all about, right? I loved doing it, even though there are always frustrating moments when you just have to walk away. I have the club to thank mainly. Without the camaraderie and generosity of fellow members it would have been really, really tough. There are no factory drawings for
