RIGHT FIRST TIME
What was it that made you opt for the rather unusual classic choice of a Roadster?
In the 1950s and 1960s, my father ran a Standard-Triumph dealership in Wolverhampton. When I wasn’t at school, it was my job to wash the cars before they went back out after any work had been done. I washed and leathered a couple of Roadsters and I don’t know exactly what it was about them, but I always told myself that if I ever bought an old car, it would be one of them. That time finally arrived in 1979 when I came across this one when it was lying in ruins.
In 1979 the classic movement hadn’t taken off to anything like the extent it has now. Did friends and family look at you oddly for buying what they might have regarded as an old banger?
They thought I’d gone stark staring mad when I turned up with this lot, especially as I’d paid £700 for it. That was a lot of money back then for what was essentially a collection of bits in boxes. However, I knew that I could do something with it, even though I was taking a bit of a chance because I hadn’t inspected it too carefully and the car had been dismantled about ten years previously and then left out in
