Who remembers the Gecko? It came from Tamworth-based Nick Ingram in 1982. It neatly crossed the divide between Mini Moke and beach buggy.
Ubiquitous Mini donor supplied running gear and subframes bolted to a tough little box-section chassis to which the body, made from a mix of plywood, aluminium and fibreglass was fixed.
David Simmons of Simmons Design of Banbury, took over in 1990 before he moved to Cornwall, where he continued to sell Geckos until about 1992.
Well, some 34 years later David is back with a new version, with is longer and wider and will use the Fiat Abarth 595 as its donor.
David, now based in Devon, reckons that a good percentage of the 85 or so that were sold between 1982 and 1992 still exist and alongside the new version, he’ll continue to sell the original Mini-based variant, although donors are much harder to come by these days.
It all sounds very exciting regarding the Gecko rebooted project and the new donor is certainly an interesting one and will give the car really decent performance. Also involved in the project are David’s children, Molly and Fred and the plan is for order books to be open later this summer, when a new website will go live.
We’ll be bringing you more information on this one very soon.
In the meantime, to express an interest contact the company via david@drivegecko.com or frederick@drivegecko.com ENDS.