Telegraph Ariticle

[Geoff Kingston]

This is a shame for both parties but I can't help feel that unless a V8 conversion was on the cards they should have both realised an auto box on the original engine wasn't possible.
I would have thought that £173,000 would have prised a reasonable 405 drophead from someones garage rather than chopping up what at £20,000 must have been a fairly good 405 to end up with a copy.
Obviously the timing didn't help with the Company going bust but If I could afford to have a project like this done I would probably look outside the UK as the restoration costs with some of the specialists here are too high.
I had a local garage that normally does crash repairs cut out all the rust in an S2 Bentley re panel it and do a bare metal respray to a very high standard, this cost over £40000 less than it would have cost me based on the labour rates quoted to a fellow Bristol owner by one of the firms who work mainly on Bristols.
Even on my project however which was inspected almost every day the initial budget was excceded by nearly 100% because the rust and previous bodged repairs were worse than expected.
So will I chop the roof off one of my 401's, I don't think so.