The Kit Car Manual

Author: Iain Ayre, Hardbound, ISBN: 9781859609620, 160 Pages, 2004 Repint, 1st Published, 2003

- the complete guide to choosing, buying and building British and American kit cars.

Individualist cars started in about 1927 with a chap called John Bolster, who was dissatisfied with dull, modern production cars and experimented with games such as wooden chassis and jamming four JAP bike engines into a car. So twinbike-engined Tigers are actually quite retro. The kit scene gathered momentum in the 1950s with early GRP bodies fitted to the separate chassis of old family Austins and Fords, to produce cars such as the Hamblin Cadet.

Kits became more sophisticated as time went on, and the Falcon Caribbean is a body design that can hold its own against almost any period production sports car. Lotuses and TVRs with quite good chassis could be bought in kit form without paying purchase tax at one time, but that tax loophole was soon closed. Many kits then regressed into some pretty dire vehicles that involved scrap Beetles and Fords, with slabs of wattle-anddaub fibreglass. The Cobra explosion and the spread of the Lotus Seven replica revitalised the kit world, and the recent reintroduction of bike engines has brought it to a wider audience. The industry has matured, and there are now fewer but better cars about.

Author and journalist lain Ayre has been writing about kit and performance cars for ten years, after a career in advertising that finished up at JWT in Berkeley Square. He has published books on TVR, Maserati, Ferrari, replica Cobras and classic sports cars, and has written for Classic Cars, Classic American, Classic Ford, Classic Boat, Street Machine, Mustang Magazine USA, MG World, Land-Rover Owner International, Triumph World, Mini Magazine, Fast Ford, Jaguar World, Sportscar, Vette and KitCar USA. He launched Car Builder and Classic Ford, and is Kit-Car UK's agony aunt and club editor.

His kit CV starts with the first six-cylinder Midge, a wooden-bodied pre-war MG lookalike. Next up was a Cobra lookalike with a Chevy small-block and Jaguar running gear. Regrettably this had to be sold to pay the bills incurred in building it.
The next scheme was his own design - a Mini-based four-seater trike with '60s British/Italian styling at the front and fins at the back, immortalised in Chris Rees's book on three-wheelers. Too heavy to qualify as a motor The Swallow was an appealing little trike, but its chassis was too heavy to qualify as a motor tricycle, its production numbers remained at one.

The Ayrspeed Six followed - a fairly close replica of the gorgeous Jaguar XK120. Three of these were made, but economics and 4.2 Jaguar engines caused too many problems. lain's Ayrspeed Six is now an Ayrspeed Eight, as its third and last Jaguar engine has been replaced by the rebuilt Rover V8 featured in this very book.

The Ayrspeed Six project has had its ups and downs, tricycle, its production numbers remained at onebut has provided lain with a fast and gorgeous car and the readers of Kit-Car magazine with plenty of stories and a few laughs.