Retro Ford, April 2017 – Anglia, 2.0L XE

Here at Retro Ford magazine, we like to think that the standard of the cars in the magazine is pretty high. Now, that might sound a bit like we’re trying to blow our own trumpet, but you what, it’s actually more of a reflection of the quality of the old school metal that’s being built at the moment, rather than an attempt to big ourselves up, or to try and steal the limelight of all those talented and passionate individuals who’ve been kind enough to let us take some photos of their pride and joy in the first place. So, with that in mind, we reckon it’s fair to say that we set the bar reasonably high for feather car material and that when you pick up a copy of the mag, you’re more likely than not to be treated to some of the most innovative, exciting and just plain awesome retro Fords on the planet.

 

Every so often though, we discover something that doesn’t just raise the bar in terms of build quality and ingenuity, it launches it into the stratosphere. Feast your eyes, ladies and gentlemen, on Dave Pask’s next-level Anglia, a project car that stands head and shoulders above the rest for the simple reason that its owner has insisted on a level of attention to details throughout the build that is, if we’re being perfectly honest, bordering on psychopathic.

 

We’re talking about months of hard graft ton the bonnet, wing and door shut lines alone, never mind handmaking all the clips for the wires and hoses, or modifying the rear quarter panels to make sure the rear lights fit ‘properly’, or getting someone to customer-make the glass — and that’s just a taster. There’s also the small of how he’s managed to fit a 2-lire Vauxhall XE without cutting away any of the original metalwork, a conversion that a lot of experts in the Anglia community have always insisted isn’t actually possible.

 

 

Before we shed more light on the incredible work that’s gone into the creation of this 105E however, we need to wind the clock back a few years and take a look at how and why Dave managed to get his hands on it in the first place From the brief description above of some of the work that’s gone into it, you could be forgiven for thinking that it came into his ownership a a bit of a rusty old basket case, when in reality, that couldn’t be further from the truth.

 

“I’ve had dozens of retro Fords over the years, from Escorts to Anglias, but after putting the project cars on hold for a while with work and family life, this was a way of getting back into the swing of things.” Explained Dave. “I considered building an Escort at first, but as there seemed to be so many around I ended up looking at Anglias instead. I did actually have another Anglia shell before this one, but it was so rusty I decided that it would be more trouble than it was worth, so put the feelers out for another one.

 

“Eventually, I got word from a mate of mine that a good shell was up for sale, and that the guy selling it had got half way through stripping it and wanted rid. It turns out that it had been in dry storage for 41 years, so it was really just a case of being in the right place, at the right time.”

 

Not only did the Anglia represent a genuine ‘barn find’, it came with a mountain of paperwork and history as well, all of which outlined how the car originally been bought by a Dagenham employee, who had then used it to tour around Europe with his wife for around nine years.

 

When the original owner eventually trade dup to a Corina, he evidently decided to keep hold of the Anglia and stashed it away in a garage — only for it to be discovered 41 years later by a gardener, who was presumably looking for a lawnmower, but stumbled across a time-warp 105E instead.

 

After getting in touch with the Anglia owners’ club, 4078 VW was bought by a representative of the club, who proceeded to drive it around for a short while, before selling it on again to the individual who sold it to Dave.

 

 

“That was about five years ago,” he recalled. “Most of the work was actually done within a year and a half, including a compete dry build, before it was sent off to paint. Then we ran into a bit of snag because the bodyshop initially told us it would take two months, but it ended up taking a lot longer than that …. Anyway, it was eventually finished in time for the Classic Ford show in 2015 and went on to win a couple of trophies at other event that year, including Best Modified Anglia at the Owner’s Club AGM and National Day, and also the Kevin Milton award.”

 

So what did it take to claim those prizes? The answer is a hell of a lot of hard work. As owner of Redhill Classics, a company that specialises in custom builds for all types of classic cars (it was also the firm that built and fitted the rather tasty exhaust system for the RetroFord magazine Mk2 Escort project car that was given away at the NEC  last year), Dave brought the Anglia ‘in-house’ for all the fabrication, fitting and engine work, all of which started with stripping the shell back to its bare bones on a spit, and shot blasting away all the original Imperial Maroon paint.

 

Unsurprisingly for a car that had spent so long tucked away in a garage, Dave tells us that the shell had stood up to the test of time very well, with only a bit of rust on the wings and front headlamp bezels — a problem that was quickly solved with the addition of some new old stock replacement parts.

 

“We also steam welded the shell, lead filled a few dents here and there and epoxy coated the underside,” added Dave. “It was re-sprayed in BMW MINI Ice Blue, which might sound like a modern colour, but it’s actually an old British Leyland one left over from when BMW took them over, so technically it’s been around for 35 years or so.

 

Now, while Dave makes it sound here like the prep work for the shell involved nothing more than just filling a couple of dents and fitting some new wings, there was actually a lot more to do before the Anglia was allowed anywhere near a spray gun. Starting at the rear, Anglia experts will no doubt have spotted the red US market specification lenses, but what you can’t see is the effort that was required in order to make them fit how Dave wanted, which involved removing the lights and the interior panel, and then adjust the rear quarters inwards to ensure a tighter fit. Similarly, those 6×13-inch rear wheels sit very nicely in the arches we’re sure you’ll agree, but that’s only really because the inner arches have been squared off to ensure that they’ve got enough clearance.

 

 

Cast your eye around the interior, and those 1960 Microcell seats, which along with the rear bench have been re-trimmed in Escort Beta cloth, certainly do look the part and along with OE dash and dials, help to give the impression that cabin is factory fresh. Take a closer look though, and you’ll spot that the original radio panel has been expertly modified to accept digital oil gauges for oil temperature/pressure, speedo and revs. This, and other custom mods such as the ‘Frenched’ fluid pots, the air intake to feed cold air to the carbs and even the Weller Lotus replicas which have had the little notches in the hub caps filled and sprayed, not only look very trick, but they’ve been brilliantly executed as well — and these are just the things that you can see!

 

Under and around the car, Dave and the guys at Redhill Classics have gone to the extraordinary length of handmaking all the clips for the hoses and pipes, even going as far as tacking them on to make them look factory original and if you think that’s going above and beyond the call of duty, there’s the fact that all the glass has been custom made as well!

 

“I’ve got a mate who works in a glass shop,” explained Dave. “He measured up templates of all the door and rear quarter glass and then made them from new in toughened glass. I’ve also got another mate who fits glass into classic cars and as I was struggling to get a new front screen to fit properly, he told me he had the code for the original mould at Pilkington’s, so he got in touch with them and they made a brand new one from scratch — it might sound extreme but at least it fits properly and doesn’t leak!”

 

 

Yes, you read that properly, this Anglia has even had the glass custom built especially for it. And, just when you think it couldn’t have any more attention lavished upon it, we’ve not even got to the big job yet, which was when Dave and his team were refitting the wings and bonnet, and discovered that no matter what they did, they just couldn’t seem to get the panel gaps right.

 

“Every time we tried to fit the bonnet, the centre line was out and it just didn’t fit properly,” explained Dave. “Then, after staring at it for days and days, we realised that it had been put on wonky from new. Basically, we discovered that there was a 5/8ths of an inch tolerance allowed when fitting the panels in the factory and as the passenger wing was essentially a slightly different shape to the driver’s wing, whoever fitted the bonnet for the first time had to put it on wonky to make it look right. We spent weeks and weeks adjusting the wing, and eventually we managed to get everything sitting perfectly straight, with neat panel gaps all the way around, but it took about six months of trial and error to get it perfect.”

 

And if all that isn’t impressive enough, there’s also the small matter of that Vauxhall XE powerplant, which as we mentioned previously, has been fitted without the need to drastically modify any of the metalwork.

 

“It was always said that you couldn’t fit an XE without cutting the bulkhead so while I’ll admit that it’s a very tight squeeze, I’m pleased we manged to prove the experts wrong,” said Dave. “I’ve had a bit of stick here and there from people who say it should be a Ford engine, but the reason I chose an XE — and this is the earlier version with the better Cosworth developed Coscast head — is because it is such a tuneable engine. The torque is ridiculous, and I could get an easy 240-25-bhp out of it for half the money you’d have to spent on a Zetec. This actually made 210bhp when we had it dyno’d, but it kept lifting off the rollers so I think that’s actually a conservative estimate!”

 

Well, whether it’s got 200bhp, or 250bhp, there’s so much more to this Anglia than the horsepower it makes — which is plenty, we hasten to add, as anyone who has seen it in action lighting up the rear tyres will confirm. As we said at the start of this feature, we like to think that the standard of cars in Retro Ford mag is pretty high, and that the vast majority of those who have spent countless hours creating them can rightly be extremely proud of their achievements. But every now and again, we stumble across something that re-writes the rule book and set new standards in the process. In short, Dave Pask’s 105E is going to be a very hard act to follow indeed.

2-litre Vauxhall XE (Coscast head), ported and polished head, Weber 45 carbs, SBD ‘27’ cams, double valve springs, forged pistons, steel crank, SBD dry sump, SBD dry sump tank, alloy radiator, 4:2:1 manifold into custom 2.25-inch exhaust by Redhill Classics, SBD chassis mount kit, Milton Race Prep steering rack conversion, modified crossmember, MBE management, 210bhp

5-speed, V6 Type 9 gearbox with shortened input shaft, SBD lightened and balanced flywheel, hydraulic paddle clutch, customer 105Speed propshaft, English axle, 3.89 differential with Tran-X LSD, standard shafts

Wilwood 4-pots, with grooved and vented discs, Milton Race Prep pedal box, braided lines, (front) Milton Race Prep disc conversion with Fiesta discs and Sierra 4×4 calipers (rear)

Milton Race Prep coilovers with Gaz dampers, Milton Race Prep top mounts and strut brace, custom double width anti-roll bar (front), Milton A frame and adjustable anti-roll bar, Gaz adjustable dampers, de-cambered leaf springs, lowered approx. 2-inches (rear)

5.5×13-inch Weller Lotus replicas with 175/60/13 tyres (front), 6×13-inch Weller Lotus replicas with 185/60/13-inch tyres (rear), custom centre caps re-sprayed silver all round

1960 Microcell seats, re-trimmed in Escort Beta cloth with matching rear bench, new door cards, black headlining and carpets, original dash and dials, custom radio panel featuring digital oil temperature/pressure, speedo and rev counter, custom made toughened door glass, rear quarter glass and rear screen, new front screen from Pilkington

Re-sprayed in BMW MINI Ice Blue, US-spec red rear lights, new stainless steel bumpers, re-conditioned trim

Original Deluxe shell, seam welded, tubbed rear arches