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Introduction
Nothing but the best
Original skills

The Salvage Squad's third task is to bring the Bristol 407 sports car that is rusting in a north London garage back to its original condition. They have only two weeks to do it as it needs to be ready for the world's largest gathering of Bristol cars, the Bristol Owners Competition, where their work will be judged by experts at the Bristol Owners Club.
The Bristol 407 is an elegant car made by the exclusive Bristol Motor Company. Their factory in the West Country has produced hand-built cars for over 50 years but they never make more than three cars a week. This one, built in 1962, is a classic example of the 1960s Grand Tourer style.

The car needs to be completely gutted and all the old paint removed, the steering has to be mended, the seats reupholstered and the body of the car repaired. The Squad soon discover that much of the work they need to do is extremely skilled, since only top quality repairs will be accepted at the tough Owners Club competition. The body of the car is made from aluminium and the bodywork needs to be reshaped using coachbuilding techniques that are over 100 years old. These methods were originally used in the manufacture of horse-drawn coaches and were later adapted for the coachwork on luxury cars like the Rolls Royce and Daimler. The first Bristol cars were built by engineers from the Bristol Aeroplane Company and were manufactured to aviation standards.

Lance McCormack, an expert at classic car restorers Romance of Rust, helps the Squad. Lance was trained at Rolls Royce and took 10 years to acquire the skills that Claire Barratt has just a few days to learn.

In modern, mass-produced cars, the panels are made in huge presses but Bristols are hand-built using more difficult and time-consuming techniques. To shape the aluminium body panels Claire uses a coachbuilders' tool called the English wheel. This is a huge, solid, cast iron frame with a large top roller and bottom curved wheel which can be moved up and down. Claire moves the metal backwards and forwards between the wheels, stretching it into the correct shape to form a side panel.
Claire also has to learn how to use 'body files' for shaping and polishing the aluminium bonnet of the car. First she files the surface of the bonnet to find the bumps and dents. Then she flattens out the dents by holding a 'dolly' (a shaped hand weight) under the bonnet and tapping the aluminium with a 'flipper' (a hand-made bar which flattens out the lumps and bumps). This technique is called 'planishing' and is essential to preserve the high quality of the bodywork.
Today these historic methods of coachbuilding are practised by fewer than 100 people in Britain but they give a finish that cannot be reproduced by machines.