The already impressive Classic Motor Cars set-up is now even more so. By taking on two more adjacent units, CMC have doubled their floor space, which has allowed considerable reorganisation. The new area is being used for building up cars after paint. So, when a restoration commences, the bodywork (the 'dirty' work) continues to be done in one dedicated shop, while all the other parts are now stored in racking on a mezzanine floor above the new shop. After painting, the shell is taken into the new area, the parts are moved to racking alongside the shell and the fitting up takes place in a clean, spacious, ideal environment. Partitioned off from this area is a new, larger trim shop (see details below).

 

Additional to this new unit is the existing shop for all servicing and mechanical work (where fitting-up used to take place), the machine shop, engine shop and another new unit for car storage.

To view a video of the new facilties click here.

CMC recently expanded their facilities and now have a larger trim facility doubling the manufacturing area to include a new sewing station and an additional member of the trimming staff.

The storage area for trim has been increased, allowing the company to stock and store hides for easier and quicker turnaround of vehicles.

With this increased capacity, CMC can now offer trim facilities to all makes of classic cars. As an example, a new hood is being made and fitted to a Bentley Series 2 Continental by H J Mulliner.

All trimming is undertaken in-house using leather supplied by the leading UK manufacturers, such as UK Hide Company, Bridge of Weir and Andrew Muirhead.

Everything is made to the car to ensure exact fit.


To view the new trim workshop facilities click here.

CMCs reputation for world-class Jaguar restoration work has yet again been enhanced by one of the most challenging projects ever undertaken on any car.

Over five and a half thousand skilled man hours have gone into the restoration of what is regarded by aficionados as the most beautiful E-Type ever produced, the Lindner/Nocker Lightweight.

Our craftsmen have been able to save over 90% of the original body from the tangled shell that entered our workshop over three years ago. This truly amazing restoration is a wonderful testament to the highly skilled team in our body shop.

If you have a special body project like the one in the attached article, or an accident repair, we would be pleased to help.

To view more details on this amazing restoration click here.

To many people, the E-type Roadster with a hard-top fitted is just stunningly beautiful. They are pure sculpture.

With the original E-types available as just two models, the Roadster and the Fixed Head Coupe, we now tend to forget that owners fitted a hardtop to the open versions in the winter. Jaguar thought the variation important enough to devote a full page of the original brochure to a roadster with the hard-top fitted.

We have now remanufactured these hard-tops for the Series 1 and Series 2 cars (3.8 and 4.2 litre-engined E-types). They are an exact reproduction of the original ones produced by Jaguar, including double skin fibre glass, Perspex rear window, chrome-plated brass mouldings, cantrail and body seals. Click here for more information on the CMC remanufactured E-type hard-tops.

With very little time to spare, we completed the substantial repairs to the famous 7 Days and 7 Nights XK 120, which is part of the Jaguar Heritage collection, in time for the recent Goodwood Revival meeting, where it was displayed outside the Earls Court re-creation in the paddock.

Originally the XK was used by Jaguar's legendary Engineering Director, Bill Heynes, as his road car. However, when Jaguar decided to take a 120 to the banked Montlhéry track, just outside Paris, for a spot of record breaking, they used this car, the second right hand drive example built. Pye provided a radio so the drivers could keep in touch with the rudimentary pits.

Among the four drivers was a young Stirling Moss who remembers it well and thinks the feat of covering over 16,000 miles non-stop for seven days was quite something for a road car. He recalls that the track was very bumpy, just to add to the challenge.

To alleviate the boredom, Moss and his fellow drivers Jack Fairman, Leslie Johnson and Bert Hadley, played all sorts of tricks on each other. One got on top of another's shoulders and they wrapped an enormous tarpaulin round them like a very large cape, added a cone to his head and appeared in the darkness on the edge of the banking!

A very rare XKSS is currently in our workshops for a little light repair work to the bodywork. Only 16 were made by Jaguar before the famous factory fire in 1957 supposedly put paid to any more being built as vital jigs were lost.

As the XKSS was basically a D-type with a full width windscreen, grafted on bumpers blades which would be copied for the E-type, a passenger door, luggage rack and soft top, the XKSS was very much the supercar of its age – and rather rarer than most supercars.

A few years ago, we rebuilt one of the most famous of the works D-types, OKV 1, and this car is often in the workshops for race preparation. So, we are no strangers to genuine D-types.