Let’s Build a Kit Car – The Story of ‘Kermit’ an Aero Cyclecar:
This book is a detailed build of my latest kit car, an Aero Merlin Barrel-Back Cyclecar. While it is oriented towards building an Aero Merlin, describing each stage in considerable detail, there are nevertheless many aspects that will be of interest to builders of other makes of kit car.
Like many before me I am an avid motorist and enjoy vintage and classic cars. In my youth I underwent two apprenticeships; first in vehicle and then aviation engineering. For me aviation was a short term career and after six years, during which I worked my way up to crew chief, I returned to vehicle engineering. During my aviation career I carried out quite a few aluminium fuselage repairs on both helicopters and aeroplanes. That experience certainly helps when it comes to building a kit car.
I have always enjoyed working with my hands and after being promoted to my first management position in 1971, which meant leaving the tools, my previous hands-on-work became my hobby and I restored a 1947 Rover 16 Sports Saloon. Over the next few years this was followed by another classic car and some old motorbikes restorations.
Whilst I found restoration of the Rover 16 to be quite satisfying the second car restoration was less so and being of monocoque construction involved a lot of welding to combat the dreaded rust. This rather put me off restoring old cars, although it did considerably improve my oxy/acetylene welding skills.
In early 1981 came the big breakthrough when I bought a ‘Gentry kit car; i.e. no body rust to worry about as the body was home made from marine plywood and aluminium sheet, which in my case was built onto a Triumph Vitesse 1600 chassis. I enjoyed building this car and the Gentry was followed by four more kit cars, the latest one being ‘Kermit’ my Aero Merlin.
For me the building of a kit car enables me to work with my hands, or as I like to think of it ‘on-the-tools’, which can be very satisfying.
The beauty of a kit car, compared to a vintage or classic car, is that you are not subject to a concours type build; i.e. you don’t have to be a slave to originality, and can build a nice car incorporating all your own desired features, constrained only by the depth of your pockets.
My book contains a preamble, 43 chapters and 9 appendices. As an A5 size paperback it contains 421 pages.
Whilst the numbers of kit cars appear to have diminished since those early years there are nevertheless still a reasonable number to choose from, but all that glitters is not gold! If I could offer just one piece of advice to a potential kit car builder it would be; “If the company does not have a ‘demonstrator’ that you can drive and inspect then walk away!”
It is worth bearing in mind that the building of a kit car can cost considerably more than you might initially expect so take what the manufacturer implies with a pinch of salt; it will also take many hundreds of hours but as most of these are of a pleasurable nature that aspect of things really doesn’t matter too much. Of course you don’t have to buy a new kit and fully built and abandoned kit cars are continuously available on e-Bay at quite reasonable prices. However some builders cut corners and if buying an abandoned kit it is worth looking for one that is barely started, rather than one which is approaching completion but has been poorly built. Another point to bear in mind is that many of the early kits from the seventies and eighties were built using donor cars that are now both expensive and in very short supply.
I originally estimated it would take me 250 to 350 hours to complete the build, in the event it took at least double that with more time spent rectifying defects than building the kit. With a properly designed kit 250 hours would have been adequate.
21 December 2020
The normal price of my book will be £3.99 but it is currently on special offer at an introductory price of £1.99
21 December 2020
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