I sold this car around 2003, but this is what I did to a 1971 A-Series Manta when I decided to build it from 2001-2003 The pics show the first shelI bought in London in red primer. An exemplary job was done in the area of the engine with a well fabricated tunnel  that I would later use parts of.

Many of the panels however had been warped when welding arches etc  and I decided not to start yet another complete build of a car (having restos constantly for 12 years) and sought a good A series to transplant the engine into. That is the white car you can see. It had won ‘best Original A-Series Manta’ a couple of years before I bought it.

The pictures show the engine bay of the new shell which I fabricated to suit the V8 and painted in white using parts from the other shell. The front crossmember was stripped and painted and you can see the V8 engine mounts welded in place on it, with the corresponding piece below the manifold on the engine block.

I moved the battery to the boot/trunk in a carbon fibre box and in its place is a Europa Spares remote servo. This is an easy fit, with only a small master cylinder directly replacing the original servo and a single pipe from it to the remote servo on the right, which is then ‘plumbed in’ in the normal way.

You can also see how the new bulkhead and tunnel are formed. Where the master cylinder sits would have been the distance from the windshield to the original bulkhead.

Trevor Lewis made me this excellent broadspeed turbo replica front spoiler which I painted with some of the original paint left over from the cars respray in 2000 that the previous owner had given me.

The first version I made of the interior  is largely unchanged from the original except I replaced the fake wood clock surround with an alloy version and the centre clocks have a matching alloy look sticker.

The original seats are immaculate, but offered no support or head restraint, so a search for period style replacements was made for several months..

I found these 1982 Porsche 928 seats on ebay around sep03. They are vinyl with a leather centre and although I payed way too much for them at £400 they where exactly what I was after.

I masked off the rear seats and door panels and used a black vinyl spray paint to colour them to match the porsche seats. the result transformed the cars interior. I’d have to say this is one of the best looking interiors I’ve ever done, but not the hardest.

I briefly thought about arching the car, but many things over the year influenced me and it eventually finished as above with the revolution alloys shod in Toyo Proxies, Opel GT tail lights new chrome bumpers etc. and I was hugely pleased with the aesthetics of the car having created a very sleek but almost original look.

Probably the only regret at this time was the automatic transmission, but I never got as far as fixing that except to order a new one. What started all this Manta enthusiasm was following rallying in the eighties, so when a well known real group-B homologation car came up for sale in the form of Davy McKees i200/400R the A had to go, but what a beautiful shape of car they are.