[q cars] affordable, traditional motoring

Pilgrim FT 2000 - not mine but almost exactly the same - my AA badge was nicked.

It's well known in Britain about the dreaded "Q" car and I'm not talking police here. I mean the Q reg or old, discontinued reg for cars which their owners like to think are "custom" and detractors call "bl--dy kit cars".

I know the Americans are also interested - I recall a 56 Buick being restored by my friends.

The thing is, to buy a restored classic is big biz in most western countries and the mark-ups are phenomenal. Along with that is the restoration time and the fact that they're essentially metal and so they rust.

How, today, to enjoy the pleasure of traditional motoring in the old manner, genuinely so, out there on the road with the wind streaming through the long vanished hair and the throaty roar of a sporty roadster?

FT at the show - note the long nose and running board.

Q is one way to go.

The problem is, they're like French and Australian wine. Buy an Australian wine and it's almost always going to be very, very good, with a reasonable price tag. You can say this about the bulk of the sedans on the road today. They do their job well.

But buy a French wine and you have to know what you're doing because the worst is like bilge water - way below any Australian wine. The best though - ah, yes, the best.

So it is with Q cars, whose manufacturers range from the quite frankly dodgy, shoddy and appalling, especially with cobra muscle car and Lotus 7 replicas up to a level of manufacture which puts some firms, like Pilgrim of Small Dole, near Brighton, into the elite class in themselves. And before you sniff at GRP, remember the Europa and Bolwell Nagari were GRP.

For a start, you're going to have to want this sort of motoring - the BMW and Volvo are seductive with their push button, dial-in, silky sliding luxury and sheer hush power. And you pay for it. This is different - it's raw, sporty motoring the way it used to be.

Dickie trunk treatment of surprising size inside, with mounted spare wheel.

Having got past that point, this site with the appalling name has some good starter info and one thing becomes clear very quickly - you get what you pay for and put time into. For example, one of the most popular companies has a build time, using donor components like Fords of 142 hours and the cost is 2, 600 pounds.

Good luck.

On the other hand, a company like Pilgrim, which does an Austin Healey 3000 replica as well as dedicated designs such as my FT, is all about quality and to hell with money and time. Thus you can pay up to 27 000 pounds and spend up to 3000 hours building the damned thing.

The ones in the photos above were not mine but this is the only photo I have of my baby, in North London.

Now why would you do that, when there are a multitude of real production marques under that price? The answer is "love".

I bought my FT because firstly, it was not a replica but a design in itself, secondly it was within my price range [almost], thirdly, because of the build quality and certainly not the least point - it was such a pretty little thing with a beautiful note to the exhaust.

I took her for her MOT and the chief mechanic said it was the best of its type he'd ever seen built. It should have been so - the man who constructed it was a stickler, a pedant. Even the boot/trunk was plushly carpeted and the upholstery was leather. The rag top was double thickness and made by a woman [his wife] who produces these things.

I am telling absolutely no porkies when I say I drove it in October/November round Scotland, through storms and it neither leaked nor did I freeze. The rag top purred like a sail rather than flapped. In fact the heater had to be turned down.

An example of poor interior design, with two clashing styles of wood panelling but still illustrating build quality.

Of course, where it came into its own was in the summer, top down and neatly stowed in its cover at the back, girl beside you, hair streaming backwards, up hill, down dale, to some ridgetop moorland pub for lunch. That was hard to beat. And motoring up a hill, cresting the top, only for the English sun to burst out from behind a cloud - that was close to idyllic.

The down side for some but I quite liked it, was that with that long, long, nose, you had to "drive" it in an arc round corners rather than "turn" it. Turning circle was not really a concern in the 30s. It took getting used to and I loved the way it moved.

The other thing was that with those black wings scooping the air out front and a 2 litre tweaked Cortina engine in a 1600 pound [about 730 kg] body, there was a tendency to rocking and even flight at speed - 30s designs were not meant to go over 80 mph. I did actually take off once on the M25, going under the A110 flyover and how many people can say that?

The site labels this "as good as it gets" - do you need more comfort than this in an open sports car? This is the Sebring.

Popular? You can say it was. Coming out of Debenhams' car park, the old chap on the gate said: "Ee, it does my heart good to see one of these again." I didn't have the heart to tell him what marque Pilgrim actually was.

Also I recall being at a Yorkshire pub, walking outside and the car was surrounded by men. Oh dear, I thought, here's trouble. "Yes, gentlemen?" A twenty minute discussion ensued about my FT and as we drove away eventually, my girl and I, it was in a serene mood, helped only marginally by the XB we'd consumed inside.

If you can do it, I'd urge you to try one of these, one of the classic designs or maybe the Sebring because it's a world which, outside the city, brings the drab grey motorway commuting suddenly to life and adds pleasure to your existence.

Plus the girls like it.

Or at least they did in the old days.

Sebring is a company which makes a nice vehicle, originally using Rover parts.