Kitcars have been my life really since 1984 and boy have things changed, what was a laugh then is now a deadly serious industry but if you’ve just joined us please do read on…

Twenty years ago you’d turn up at a kitcar manufacturer and things would be a lot more ahem, basic then they are today.

For a start, marketing was a poorly practised skill in those days and a ‘brochure’ would be a single-sided black and white A4 sheet, with an out of focus snap of the car if you were lucky. Subsequent price changes were simply Tippex-ed over, while there might have been Marmite stains over the sheet itself.

Showrooms were non-existent and usually consisted of a lock-up garage with a bucket or two strategically placed to catch the leaks in the roof, while a glance at the wall would greet the visitor with a pair of 48D cups! They’d be the only cups you’d want to look at to be honest as Fairy Liquid was an un-necessary expense for an eighties kitcar manufacturer.

The sales desk would be strewn with junk, usually including all or some of the following - a sandwich box, chewed Bic biro, porn mag or three and a four-day old Daily Mirror.

You had to be really keen to want to build an Earwash Ditchfinder and the like, and sometimes it seemed that the customer had to have their patience tested to breaking point. Treat ‘em bad, and they still come back, then bling, maybe they did really want a kit after all. Most of the time the companies were run by brainy engineers who just didn’t have people skills, and most weren’t deliberately being rude or awkward. Mind you, some did take a delight from it…

As for the test drive, that really could be a life-changing experience. Actually, as a journalist I probably got better treatment than the average punter, and I had several heart-stopping experiences where I almost got arrested, beaten-up, chased by dogs and did I mention arrested? - to name but a few…

If there was a demo car the chances of it being operative were remote but if it was a runner that was a big result (or sometimes not!), and invariably within ten minutes it would usually run out of petrol, catch fire, breakdown, or a combination of all three, with the odd bit falling off the car for good measure. I’ve lost more hoods on dual carriageways then I care to remember, plus even the odd wheel and one hilarious occasion (but not at the time) when a budding manufacturer proudly boasted to me that his hood was “totally leakproof”. Me being a mischievous 23-year old at the time, wound him up a little proclaiming: “Well, let’s go through that car wash over there then”. My companion boldly – or foolishly – bless him, took up the challenge, and as we entered the wash, in the corner of my eye I recall seeing the alarmed cashier running towards us waving his arms (as we ignored the sign that said no high vehicles and NO CONVERTIBLES!), however, off we went, a bit like a barrel over Niagara Falls, and proceeded to get completely drenched in soapy, stinking recycled water! The hood was not watertight after all! Surprise, surprise.

Actually, that manufacturer, who’ll remain nameless, was around until a few years ago and I actually became good mates with him, strangely, we never spoke of the incident again. What happens in the car wash stays in the car wash I suppose is the moral of the story!

On many other occasions engines would be running rough and ticking over at 3000rpm, while some cars were like trying to drive a firework.

One day, the late Peter Coxhead and I, while having a lunchtime meeting in a pub (funny how pubs have proven an essential pacifier and catalyst over the years), having just picked up a ratty, but at the time highly fashionable, Lamborghini Countach, which we’d left in the car park, watched with glee as curious locals climbed all over this not so exotic supercar, complete with wonky gullwing doors and knackered Renault engine, having their illusions shattered about what they believed to be a genuine Lambo. One even exclaimed: “Blimey, I knew things were bad at Lamborghini, but I didn’t think they were that bad, they're using Renault engines”! Actually, Pete and me were arguing over who was going to have to drive this shed home!

One of the first assignments I ever went on as a 20 year old, wildly enthusiastic budding journalist, was to a Cobra manufacturer who had a fierce V8-powered demo car - oh, how he laughed as he made this naïve young lad to peer into his engine bay looking for a spark as a nine foot flame leapt out of the trumpets as he started his 500bhp V8 up and watched my hair and eyebrows almost catch fire, not to mention my nylon tie! Git.

I remember one day, pouring with rain, going out with a manufacturer, based in Essex (again nameless!) who struck me as being a bit of a wideboy. We pulled into a petrol station, sticking £5 of finest four star into his demo car. I then sat there stunned as he proceeded to drive off without paying! He demonstrated highly capable getaway driver skills that afternoon as I clung on for dear life and wondered what on earth he was doing, while inadvertently acting as lookout!

I’ve been to manufacturers who’ve had fights with customers while I was there, I’ve been chased by military policemen, I had a bloke try to buy a Caterham demonstrator off me for cash no questions asked (“tell ‘em someone pinched it while you were in the pub”) plus there was the time when we dropped more than a few pints of oil all over the crunchy gravel drive of a lovely country house we were using as a photo location, because the ratty car we were testing decided to drop its lunch. All of this happened because I was there to tell a kitcar story.

If the test drive hadn’t made you wonder what on earth you were contemplating doing with your money, a factory tour was always guaranteed to be an entertaining experience.

The chassis shop was a good starting point, as you’d be pretty sure to see monkeys bashing hell out of pieces of metal on wooden trestle tables with lump hammers, while the welder would be waving an oxyacetylene torch around like a daisy, risking igniting the whole place.

Then it would be on to the fibreglass area. Usually manned by a spotty youngster, who’d graduated from sniffing UHU, after he’d discovered that resin would keep you high permanently, while he’d think nothing of lighting up a constant line of Benson & Hedges' finest.

When he did get to work he’d be daubing resin onto chopped strand matting in an uneven mess, and blind Romanian orphans could’ve done a better job frankly. Resulting bodies would be uneven, brittle and basically horrible, but he wouldn’t care because he was permanently high and feeling no pain ma'an.

Fibreglass is dangerous, resin is dangerous and Acetone is a positive killer, but how people weren’t maimed or killed weekly at eighties kitcar companies I’ll never know.

So, here we are in 2007, and I survived and so did a handful of manufacturers of the day, but I can honestly put my hand on my heart and say that standards have changed for the better immeasurably since those dark days, and funny little plastic cars might have left a stigma behind but there really are some fantastic products around now. However, I have to confess, I can’t help but think of those old days and smile, when crap was acceptable and bodging was king! How times have changed…I hope you agree that the quality of car we feature in totalkitcar magazine and totalkitcar online are superb…

Words by Steve Hole

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