A sorry tale of editorial coercion,
Let me make it perfectly clear from the start I didn‘t want to do it!
The last thing in the world I wanted to do was restore a grotty P6. I had no experience whatsoever of restoration and I don‘t (or at least didn‘t) like P6s.
It was all your editor‘s fault. He was sitting in the Bee‘s Wing crying pitifully into his beer about some Rover 2200 TC which was on the way to the scrap heap despite having by far the best base unit your esteemed editor had ever seen. (Actually he cried near his beer. To have cried into it would have diluted it!) Scrapping this alleged gem would certainly be a crime!
Always public spirited in the face of a grown man crying I ventured the information that I had room to STORE this car until it could be restored. Several beers later it was widely accepted that I said RESTORE and by that time it was too late.
The vendor, who I now suspect of having been in on the scam from the start, agreed to wait till after Sledmere 1998 and the deal was struck at a price which should have rung alarm bells. Sadly it‘s hard to be alert at closing time in the Bee‘s Wing.
Well, having failed to find a way out I found myself, together with the aforesaid editor, trying to collect a large motor car from the narrowest, steepest drive you have ever seen. Not only that but the garage and drive failed to line up by at least 6 feet and the Land Rover we brought to rescue this automotive waif couldn‘t fit up the drive. Fortunately the vendor had agreed to fit wheels to this hulk and a plan was hatched to back the spectacle frame (cadged from Fred Bell) as far as it would go up the hill and to then launch the P6 at it in the hope that the house wall would deflect it back on course if the aim proved less than accurate. It worked!
So, we have the car in towable condition, albeit with the spectacle frame a good 12 inches either side of the Land Rover. (See photograph) We even got it home in one piece without hitting any of the clowns who didn‘t notice the extra 12in and tried to pass us in the opposite direction down the very narrow Beckfield Lane.