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COB 6008 – RESTORATION

By 2009, at the age of forty-six, COB 6008 was looking rather tired and in need of some tender loving care. Kevin Kivlochan took the decision to undertake a full and detailed restoration to return the car to its original specification and paint scheme, as it was when Jack Sears raced at Croft and as it appeared at the 1965 Angolan Grand Prix.

Once the blue paint was removed, the bodywork revealed the marks from previous accidents and assorted small holes, made for who knows what reason? The bonnet revealed traces of the twenty-six louvres, now flattened and welded closed. It was decided to keep that bonnet as a momento and create two new ones, a hand-made louvred version, with each louvre narrowing as they progress down the bonnet, and one with the standard race air intake.

The mechanical restoration was undertaken by Thunder Road in Woking, with the critical bodywork restoration handled by Lawrence Kett of G&A Fabrications. Lawrence is an ex-AC employee and is justifiably famous for his skill in automotive restoration. As much original aluminium bodywork as possible was retained; the oil air-scoop was removed, the nose reprofiled and the front wheel arches returned to MkII ‘slabside’ road car specification. Much discussion regarding the profile of the rear wings resulted in some highly skilled panel beating before everyone agreed that both wings matched.

The next stage was to paint the car in a shade of Old English white, carried out by Chris Hall and the final touch was to add hand painted number plates, courtesy of signwriter Andy Fredericks. It was then shipped to Simpson Race Exhausts for two custom-built systems, for road and race, which necessitated making a new tool to spin the ends from tailpipe size to the silencer size to make it look original. Much midnight oil was then burned by Alan and Alec at Thunder Road as the car was re-assembled in time for a shake-down test at Mallory Park prior to competing in the Le Mans Legend race in July 2011.