Hi, thanks Bob and Allen. GTM's always seemed to evoke friendly responses
About the same time the task force were setting off for the Falklands, I was getting excited about ordering my type B kit from Peter and Paddy at the East Leake GTM factory. I was eighteen and naive, full of 1380cc's and 649 cams but not very realistic about windscreen wiper and steering column mountings. The chassis number for my kit was, I think, 82B, the 82 presumably being the year of manufacture. After many false starts, marriage, children, job changes, house moves, family traumas etc I finally drove my gleamingly finished GTM at one hundred miles an hour down the undulating roads across Salisbury plain....... ahem, sorry, that last bit was a day dream I still suffer from to this day. Actually, I sold my rather sorry looking, partly assembled nemesis to a Mini obsessed old friend for £500. That was in about 1999. He subsequently sold it on to someone who I believe lived in Austria. It would be quite nice to know where it is now (if it still exists) and even to persist with the pipe dream that I might own it again one day
Otherwise, I would be happy, to one day, own and drive any coupe, thirty plus years after I first dreamt of doing so though I am still in rather a transient life situation for the time being.
Allen, my user name indeed comes from my favourite old brit sci fi film 'Village of the Damned.' I've read a few other John Wyndham books including The Kraken Wakes and Chocky
. I currently drive a Fiat Marea which has been with me a long while now and regularly gets threatened with replacement. And for my sins I ride an old Honda Bros which has a similar cult status as the GTM. I don't generally refer to the 'coupe' as such because it was simply the GTM when I purchased my kit; there were no other models in production. An old boss used to ask me how the 'Cox' build was going which dates him even more than me!!In the more recent past I've also looked at the possibility of a Secma 500. The last car of interest which I owned was a 1970 aqua blue Mini formerly owned by a Duchess.
Anyway, I've carped a bit. Nice to get in touch with the scene again
Peter
