Ford-Based Kit Cars

There was a time when an elderly Ford Escort reaching the end of its useful life was not necessarily destined for the scrapyard. In the hands of a determined British enthusiast, it might instead become a sports car, a vintage roadster, or something resembling a miniature Ferrari, provided its creator possessed sufficient imagination, a reasonably well-equipped garage and a spouse prepared to tolerate several years of mechanical debris.

In Ford-Based Kit Cars (1988), Pierce Riemer and Stephen Mills explore the wonderfully eccentric world of home-built motoring, where humble Ford mechanical components could be transformed into vehicles of considerably more exotic appearance. Published by Haynes, this fascinating volume celebrates the ingenuity of Britain’s kit car industry, an extraordinary enterprise built upon the belief that ordinary motorists should be allowed to construct their own dream machines, preferably without the inconvenience of establishing a major automobile factory.

Ford provided an ideal mechanical foundation for this peculiar automotive revolution. Its engines, gearboxes, axles and suspension components were plentiful, relatively affordable and familiar to generations of mechanically minded enthusiasts. Why purchase an expensive sports car when you could acquire a collection of fibreglass panels, dismantle an ageing Cortina and spend the next eighteen months discovering that nothing fitted quite as easily as the manufacturer’s brochure suggested?

The book examines the remarkable variety of Ford-based creations that emerged from Britain’s flourishing specialist car industry. From sporting roadsters and dramatic coupés to nostalgic recreations of earlier motoring eras, these vehicles demonstrated that imagination and mechanical resourcefulness could produce extraordinary results from the most unpromising beginnings.

Naturally, kit car ownership required a particular temperament. Patience was essential, optimism indispensable and a willingness to improvise absolutely fundamental. The finished vehicle might possess the appearance of an expensive Italian thoroughbred while retaining the mechanical heart of a modest British family saloon. This was not necessarily a disadvantage, particularly when replacement parts could be obtained from the local motor factors rather than imported from Modena at considerable expense.

Riemer and Mills capture this distinctive period of motoring history, when small manufacturers and enthusiastic amateurs challenged conventional ideas about automotive production. It was a world in which individuality mattered, engineering ingenuity was celebrated and the phrase ’some assembly required’ could represent several years of one’s remaining life expectancy.

Condition: Good. This is a previously owned copy dating from 1988, showing ordinary signs of age and handling. Unlike the vehicles featured within its pages, it arrives already assembled and should require neither specialist tools nor an understanding of Ford electrical wiring.

Published by Haynes in 1988. ISBN: 9780854296231.

Offered by Crappy Old Books, where we admire the British tradition of taking perfectly ordinary machinery, surrounding it with fibreglass and announcing the creation of something magnificent.

An excellent addition to any collection of kit car literature, classic motoring history or amateur automotive engineering. Particularly recommended for anyone who has ever looked at a rusty Ford Sierra and thought, with dangerous optimism, that underneath all that disappointment was a Lamborghini waiting to escape.

Keep browsing: See more Transport books Other books by Pierce Riemer and Stephen Mills