More attacks on our freedoms

My son has recently decided to get his "project" going. He has a Triumph GT6 Mk1 chassis and all the original running gear, registration and log book.

He just wanted a body of a 50s style to put on it.

It was when we ended up with a superb GRP Austin Healey 3000 body at a great price that we realised we're not allowed any more to build a car without the permission and controls of the "powers that be"

We, in the car game call them the nazis. Pettyfogging busy bodies and nosey Parkers whose only grip on real life is to spoil it for the rest of us in the spurious name of "safety".

I have built cars, my father built his own cars as did my uncle (see earlier blogs entries) and my son spent nine years restoring classic sports and racing cars to the highest level. Cars worth millions of pounds.

So are we to be told we need the permission of some faceless job'sworth on a fat salary before we can touch the rough and ready, poorly designed and executed Triumph chassis with our magic?

Alas, we have no choice. If we touch the chassis with a saw, grinder or welding torch we lose the registration and have to be regarded as a new car and pay them £540 for a short examination, which, if we fail on the slightest item , we have to pay again for a retest.

So by way of the huge middle finger to all these nazis, we are leaving the precious chassis alone and modifying the body which they don't care about. We are moving the front wheel arch back 8 1/2" so it fits the Triumph chassis. As an ex modelmaker for the car design circus, that is not a big deal for me. But for those who do not have my experience it could prove a stumbling block too far.

So all we need to wonder about, having, as my Dad would have said, "shot them up the arse",

is what do we call it? A Trealey or a Healumph?