This old fibreglass sports car dates back to the very early sixties when it was all the rage to buy up knackered old Ford Pops, rip the bodywork off, and fit a
sleek racy bodyshell to the pre-war underpinnings.
I heard about this old car via this website, the owner contacting me asking for some guidance about selling it and wondering if I'd be interested, having read about the Ashley that I used to own, another sit-up-and-beg Pop based creation. He told me he had this 'Falcon Caribbean' (as he thought it was, and so did I for a few weeks!) cluttering up his garage and that it really was time that it was moved on.
Being a sucker for anything interesting I decided to buy it, based on some digital photos that the owner had emailed up to me.
This was late in 2003, and it wasn't til after the New Year that I was able to journey southwards and collect this semi-derelict Special, sitting now on a very modified, and very rusty, Herald chassis.
Some investigation revealed that this was in fact a shell made by Nickri in c1961, just as interest in self-build Specials was in decline. It is probably for this reason that they were not on the market for long, and according to those in the know this is the only recorded survivor of what was probably a fairly limited production run. Many years ago the Pop chassis under mine had been chucked in a hedge and replaced with an altogether more civilised Herald offering, suitably chopped and modified to accomodate the Champion bodyshell.
The chassis really is in a poor state now, and I'm in two minds as to whether to try and restore the chassis or buy a better one (perhaps a Vitesse Mk2 example) and modify that in the same way. Time will tell!
Update mid 2004 I have found, and acquired, a tubular spaceframe chassis running Aquaplane 100E engine, and this should fit under the Nickri Champion shell very well, I hope, one day..!
Update late 2004 Due to an upcoming surge of E83W acquisitions, I decided to move on both this and the spaceframe special, to new homes. The Nickri, which featured in Classic and Sportscar magazine this year, is with a new owner
in Sale, Manchester, who is working on lifting the body from the rotten chassis and plans to fit it to a replacement Herald frame. I can't wait to see it all fettled up - I was sorry to see it go, but realistically I wasn't going to get around to it in the near future, and selling both Specials meant I could buy the E83Ws that I really wanted :-) You can following the ongoing resurrection of this unusual little sportscar on this site, run by John M who now owns the car.
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