IN the February 2023 issue of LRM, we told the story of how Darren Ashcroft’s 1954 Series I resto project ended up, half-finished, being shipped from Macclesfield to the village of Nagyszénás, which is about 100 miles southeast of Budapest, when its restorer, Laszlo Izso, had to return home to his native Hungary.
“Hungary certainly wasn’t part of my restoration plan,” Darren tells me with a chuckle. “Having bought the Series I in Ireland and shipped it back to Stockport, I’d used it for over ten years as a workhorse before deciding to consign it to Laszlo’s engineering business in Macclesfield, called The Classic Mechanic, to be rebuilt properly.
“Laszlo came highly recommended by my good friend of many years, Simon Spurrell, and all the work Laz did on the Series I was brilliant. He is an absolute perfectionist. But in 2019, after seven years of living and working in the UK, he had to return to
