Sabre Story Part 2

In late October 1996 I spotted an advert for a Sabre Six, a "car plus another for spares, with a repaired chassis, a V5, and a Mays head". I took a day off work and drove up to Hull. The cars were in a shed in a timber yard, and couldn't have presented a more forlorn sight; a rusty chassis still with wheels, engine, gearbox and axle in place, dusty cardboard boxes holding dismantled parts.

A week later, in a hired flatbed Transit plus trailer with a friend to share the driving, I was back up in Hull in a rainstorm getting everything loaded. One of the bodyshells had no windscreen pillars, and was cracking badly at the base of the doors as a result, so we faced it away from the front of the Transit to prevent the airflow ripping it in half, and stuffed a bonnet inside as a prop for the roof.

The other bodyshell sat on the rusty chassis with its bonnet in place, and almost looked a complete car. As a portent of what was to come, we had a trailer puncture in Newbury, and found that the hired van didn't have a jack. "They're funny-looking GT6's", said the AA man.