Tony Amato

[ColinMarr]

This message is in reply to a recent post in the Flavia section, but I thought it worth putting on LMC Legends as well:

I am slow to pick up on this, but I am really pleased to read about Michael Clarke and his memories of older times. I guess it’s quite likely that our paths have crossed at some time, particularly because we both knew Tony Amato.

Tony’s workshop was in Stanley Street, New Cross and his brother ran a more conventional car business in Lewisham, but as far as I know they never worked together. The workshop was in really primitive stables and was totally disorganised. It was amazing that anything got done there, but it usually did and when Tony was motivated it was all done to the highest standards. Sometimes things got put aside and forgotten and this was the case with his own B20, which as Michael recalls lay for about twenty years under piles of stuff at the back. It was this car that I helped Tony sell in about 1990 when it went back to Italy for restoration – see photo below.

Such was Tony’s reputation for sorting out problems with anything Italian or otherwise exotic that he did lots of work for other south London garages including Gold Seal Cars and a dealer on the New Cross Road who specialised in American monsters. Tony will be one of the ‘characters’ to be profiled in the forthcoming book ‘Lancia in Britain’.

Richard has asked me off-forum if the old Stanley Street workshop still exists. I looked it up on Google street-scene and amazingly it does! See photo below taken from Google. It is almost twenty years since Tony died and the building looks like it hasn’t been opened up since then. Other photos below include Tony working on an Alfa outside the garage and of Tony in a customer’s B20.

Colin