After 30 years working in Oil & Gas, I’ve now turned my attention to a passion I’ve carried through life: European motor cars of the Golden Age, the late 1920s and early 1930s, with a 1950’s classic thrown into the mix: Jaguar D-Type//XKSS…Our team are building a XKSX – this car will be a ‘Tribute’ to the original Jaguars with Supermarine Spitfires design/production cues and a longer wheelbase & wider track.
What we build. We build tributes. Each one is a hand-made recreation of a famous or beautiful car from the period, where possible/practical we aim to be faithful to its proportions and character rather than to make a rivet-for-rivet replica. I call the results garage art. They are meant to be looked at, sat in and enjoyed, not raced or used on the school run.
How We build. Engineering habits die hard. Every project starts with research: period photographs, drawings and measurements wherever I can find them. Then come drawings of my own. Our methods: steel or timber frames, hand-formed aluminium panels, using bucks, English wheels, powered bead roller, shrinker/stretchers and the good old hammer and dolly sets. I enjoy the problem-solving, engineering and hand-craft challenges, as much as the finished car, and I’ll share both on these pages. CAD, and AI are playing a significant part in the process, especially restoring/improving the older paper drawings, some more than 100 years old.