Andy Saunders is shaking his head in mild disbelief. 'It was the end of an exhibition in a London art gallery,' he says, 'where I'd been invited to debut my Stratos Zero replica. I got talking with a guy who'd also had a car on show, a full-size model of a car he'd designed. Admittedly, it looked quite good but it didn't move, it had no interior, no steering or suspension - it just sat there.
"This guy asked me "Why do you do it? The money you must spend..." I said, "Well, the Zero owes me 25 grand." "What part owes you 25 grand?" "All of it! Including tax and MoT." And it turned out he'd spent something like £400,000 having his model built. I just couldn't work it out. When I built Run-A-Ground, my three-wheeler speedboat, I bought a Reliant chassis for a tenner, the boat for 300 quid, the wheels from a council tip for a fiver, and I used some paint I happened to have on the shelf. The whole thing cost me £836.
That anecdote is telling in more ways than one. Saunders has been building custom vehicles since the late 1970s, always on a hobby basis his day job is managing the garage business started by his late father and he's always taken a DIY, use-what-comes-to-hand approach. All of his 60-plus creations have been made in an ordinary domestic garage and with simple hand tools. No expensive wheeling machines here; just a hammer and a dolly.
'I did buy a wheeling machine once,' Saunders confesses. An old panel-beater was retiring and he had several 19th Century examples, massive great things. I bought one off him but never had the time to learn to use it and in the end I sold it to a mate. When it's suggested that his method of panel-shaping is very much in the Italian tradition, using a hammer over a buck, he laughs and quips: 'More like a hammer over a bucket!'
Bu hikaye Octane dergisinin May 2023 sayısından alınmıştır.
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Bu hikaye Octane dergisinin May 2023 sayısından alınmıştır.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber? Giriş Yap
Will China Change Everything? - China is tearing up modern motor manufacture but is yet to make more than a ripple in the classic car world. That could be about to change dramatically
China now dominates the automotive world in a way even Detroit in its heyday would have struggled to comprehend.Helped by Government incentives, the new car world is dominated by China's industries: whether full cars that undercut Western models by huge amounts, ownership of storied European brands such as Lotus and Volvo, or ownership and access to the vast majority of raw materials that go into EV cars, its influence is far-reaching and deep. However, this automotive enlightenment hasn't manifested itself in the classic world in any meaningful way - until now.
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