Good afternoon,
I thought I would post a bit more info. on what I know believe to be Yorkshire's only Vignale!
I am hoping to tease out a bit of FPM's history to spur us on over winter with the aim of getting the car back on the road in late spring.
FPM obviously started life in Sussex, but ended up in Yorkshire in the ‘70s.
At some point it changed from white to red. I wonder when and why that might have been - other than just choice? The car has a blue vinyl interior.
Over many years FPM was on the receiving end of a patchwork quilt of repairs, now rot - that is proving hard to extract - but we will get there.
In Yorkshire the car was run pretty extensively but ended up out of commission in the late '80s. It is currently incorrectly on the DVLA register as a Lancia Beta 1800.
As far as the restoration is concerned, we are at the tipping point question of just how far do we go with this?
The front end (apart from where we slightly damaged it loading it onto the truck) is OK, the back end is far worse. So we can get to some of the worst bits, cut out and repair, the simplest route would be to take the rear quarters off. Now I know this could be expensive (it already is) but is there anyone making panels for Vignales? Rear quarters would really speed things along.
Thanks for your time and advice in advance and I hope the documents might shed a light on the cars previous life down south when it was new and sparkling. It will be again. Andy
Not sure if anyone has panels off the shelf, but I would have thought Bill Lewis or the other person, sorry I can't remember his name, might well be able to make what you require, although he would need to look at a good Vignale panel(another members car) to measure up.
Brian
8227
