December 2, 2020

Workshop Walkabout

Our week has been very busy with two photoshoots at the start of the week and new projects arriving in the workshop. Tr6’s new hood

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Mr Setter – Plymouth

“Bridge classic Cars are doing a fantastic job by brightening up our lives with the chance of winning something amazing. I buy tickets for your

Read More »

Hat Trick Winners

Last week, we had a hat trick give away! Three cars and three winners certainly kept the live draw exciting. A big congratulations to James

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Workshop Walkabout

Our week has been very busy with two photoshoots at the start of the week and new projects arriving in the workshop.

Tr6’s new hood cover

Our trim shop has been fitting the frame to the TR6. This includes riveting straps to the frame bars, marking positions for fasteners around the rear of the hood and fitting those fasteners in position. The next step is to clip the front edge of the cover in place while the fasteners are riveted to the metal bar inside the hood.

Brian, one of our trim shop specialists the glued velcro to the sidebars and screwed in metal channels for the side rubbers. Once all the fasteners have been fitted, Brian could then fit the cover to the car.

Lotus Esprit

Our Lotus Esprit has had a new water pipe fabricated from stainless steel to replace the old aluminium one that had rusted. This was made by hand in our workshop.

Jaguar E-Type Race Car

Although finish, the 1967 Jaguar E-type series 1 race car is always an ongoing project with new alterations being done frequently. This week a new door latch and release cable was fitted.

Triumph TR5

Our 1965 Triumph TR5 has had its split dashboard repaired. Refurbished by hand in our workshop, its now ready to be re-installed.

Peony Red Jensen

The trim shop has added wadding to the rear-seat centre section, glued the cover at front & back down and turned the fabric around the hinge at the back. The seats have also had the sides glued and pulled tight. Wadding has been added as well as extra foam to the side section of the rear seat base.

Primer has been done and its now ready for the fiberglass to be smoothed and corrected and the colour to be applied.

1962 Gold Jensen 541S

The Gold and Burgundy Jensen 541S had an issue with its engine which Ady, our engine specialist soon diagnosed as a cracked oil way. Oil was leaking into the water pipe. To discover the issue, Ady had to fill the oil way with water and push air through the pipe to identify the issue.

Photoshoots behind the scenes

Both Monday and Tuesday were jam-packed for our marketing team with two photoshoots for our race cars, the Jaguar E-Type and the Chevron B20. We’re excited to share the results of these shoots. A big thank you to Ellough Park in Beccles for allowing us to shoot on their track and to Mark O’Connor who featured in the Jaguar E-Type photos. As an F1 test driver and stunt driver, he was the perfect person to get behind the wheel and model for the shoot!

Mr Setter – Plymouth

“Bridge classic Cars are doing a fantastic job by brightening up our lives with the chance of winning something amazing. I buy tickets for your competitions now rather than wasting money on the lottery as the odds are far better. Keep up the good work guys and roll on tomorrow at 7pm. 👍👍

Opinion: Which cars will graduate to the hall of classics?

We’ve been discussing which modern cars we think are going to age like fine wines and which might fade into the history books. There are a whole host of current cars from run-abouts to super cars that have what it takes to become a classic car.

The conversation was triggered when a copy of the Garage Support landed on our desk in the marketing department, with the magazine open on an article that discussed the top 10 cars on the road over 3 years old. It got us thinking about how modern cars are ageing and which models will take centre stage for the next generation of sought after classics. Ellie, our marketing assistant was happy to see that her Toyota Yaris had made the cut for the top 10 cars, a small victory for a Wednesday afternoon.

Among the guesses made for future classics were the Ford Focus ST, VW Golf MK4, Mazda MX5, Toyota Starlet, Cupra Formentor, Fiat 124 Spider, F-Type Jaguar, Mitsubishi Evo VII and Aston Martin DB9.

The team had different reasons for their guesses, some suggested that much like the Beetle or Ford Escort that started its life as a simple first car, many of the common modern cars could also age well. It’s certainly a temptation to pick up a cheap car now with the foresight of a future classic!

Alternatively, we had some say that modern-day supercars such as Aston Martin DB9 and the Bugatti Veyron would make their way into the hall of classics, in much the same way as 1960’s sports cars such as the Jaguar E-Types developed into long-loved classics.

It’s certainly an interesting thought. Many of the cars we bought as cheap first cars have become sought after classics. But which cars will be the next selection of golden classics?

With the future of automotive engineering venturing into the world of electric motors and self-driving vehicles, will the classic manual petrol be a thing of the past?

We’ve found this lovely Mazda MX5 MK1 that had recently sold for just £1220 with 47,000 miles on the clock. Investing in a pre-1998 Mazda MX5 with low milage may just pay off in the future.

Hat Trick Winners

Last week, we had a hat trick give away! Three cars and three winners certainly kept the live draw exciting.

A big congratulations to James Colwell for winning our 1979 Mini Clubman with his lucky ticket number 850. The Mini will be making its way to Gloucester soon.

Our 1998 Jaguar XJR Supercharged was won by Sam Holmes with his ticket number 134. Our Jaguar will be prowling up to Cheshire to truly become the Cheshire Cat!

Finally, our 1999 Mercedes was won by Robert Read with ticket number 131. This lovely modern classic will soon be making its way down to Surrey!

Although Robert’s ticket number was selected, it wasn’t the first ticket number to be chosen by Google’s random number generator. The first ticket pulled was 183 was a number assigned to an unbought ticket. This just goes to show it’s worth buying those extra tickets as that could have been you!

We’ve got our 1972 MGB Roadster to give away tomorrow and with less than 400 tickets left, this beautiful Blaze Orange number is selling out fast!

This has been guaranteed for tomorrow so regardless, this car will find its new owner tomorrow! Could it be you?

Lotus Esprit Turbo Water Pipe

The original water pipe on a Lotus Esprit is made from Aluminium and over time the Aluminium starts to deteriorated creating very small holes in the pipework.

Water and holes tend not to agree with one another so a new pipe is required.

These pipes can be purchased but at £400 a the only supplier being in the USA it makes more sense for Dave to make us a new one at the workshops.

This has now been fabricated, fitted and the car runs perfectly once again. Great work from Dave and Pete to diagnose and fix the issue…