Inspired by a question on www.gt40s.com asking about the history of GT40 kits, I thought I would sit down and write something for the magazine on the history of the British side of the GT40 industry.  There must be a lot of club members who have started building recently and would be interested to know how it all began.

I am no expert on this subject but have some magazine articles and books to refer to as well as my memory which is failing me fast). This is not suppose to be a definitive work but just an overview of the history as I see it. Maybe some people will remember things slightly differently, if so, let me know.

The man we are all indebted to is Mr. Kenneth Vincent Attwell.  In the early eighties Ken worked at Ford’s Swansea plant as a senior production engineer.  One of his jobs was to look after their collection of historic vehicles, which happened to include a Mk. III GT40.

The story goes that the 40’s bodywork had seen better days and Ken was asked to produce some new bodywork to replace the damaged panels.  When this was done he received permission to use the moulds for his own use.  He then made the remainder of the set by taking templates from the car.  These moulds were used to produce a body which was fitted to a fairly basic chassis powered by a Ford Fiesta XR3 engine in the back.  The management where so impressed with the car that it was displayed in the foyer of the factory in Swansea.  There was so much interest shown in the car that the inevitable  happened,  KVA was born.

 The car that started it all at Ford, Swansea

Ken started producing body/chassis kits but left the purchaser to supply the remaining parts, therefore no build manual was supplied.  Ken’s philosophy was, if you needed a build manual you shouldn’t be building a 40!  The chassis was designed to take the Cortina front subframe, complete with suspension, steering and brakes and Granada trailing arm suspension and brakes at the rear.  Propulsion was usually by either Ford or Renault V6 coupled to a Renault or Citroen gearbox.  Some customers preferred the Mk I body style and so a new front and back were produced.  Where these originated have been lost in the mists of time but they vary enough from the original to say that they weren’t moulded direct from a Mk I car.  Inevitably customers starting fitting Rover and Ford V8 motors then found the poor old Cortina front end and Granada trailing arms were not up to the job.  

Then along came GT Developments from Manchester, under the management of Roger Attaway who produced weld-on front and rear sections for the KVA chassis. These were fitted with custom built suspension using ‘A’ arms on the front and radius rods at the rear similar in design to the original albeit using Granada uprights and hubs.

KVA then produced the ‘C’ type chassis (I don’t know what happened to the ‘B’) which was a very rugged chassis with purpose built suspension and capable of handling the power of a tuned V8.  Again, the customer was left to source most of the parts although a few companies were formed to specialise in supplying a lot of the parts required and also building complete cars, Phoenix Automotive Ltd. Of North Humberside being one such company.  It was a picture of their first car in Gulf colours on the front of Autocar back in 1984 that made me aware of these replicas.  At that time it was estimated a car could be built for around £6,500 - £7000 starting with a body/chassis costing £3500. A windscreen then cost £230, not a lot different to today’s price.

At about the same time Ray Christopher had joined GT Developments they produced their own GTD chassis. This chassis still followed the KVA chassis i.e. being out diagonally, and in height nearside to offside (this supposedly followed the original GT40 configuration). The reason GTD was building the new chassis like this, they were still using KVA fibre glass bodies  (these bodies followed the KVA chassis being out of alignment). When GTD decided to produce their own bodies they rectified some of the abnormalities in the body. From there they then produced a much more aligned chassis. By now they had moved to Balena Close in Poole, Dorset. They then went on to develop the whole car, which could be purchased in modules as the car took shape.  They could also be bought as a complete kit or even as a turnkey car.  This really opened up the market to people without the skill to make parts or time to search out all the parts required to put one of these cars together.  They are the most well known and respected GT40 manufacturers in this country and their cars have been bought by racing drivers ranging from Formula 1 to hill climb champions.  Where as Ken Attwell sub-contracted the manufacture of his chassis and bodies, GTD produced them in separate units at their works in Poole in Dorset.  They also sold a few Lola T70 kits based on the same chassis and later added a Mk.II body to their portfolio. 

The other well-known and successful British manufacturer is Tornado.  Andrew Sheldon started the business in about 1986 with the Tornado M6.  This was a McLaren M6 replica which was available in a space frame version designed to take a V8 engine.  With the knowledge gained from this car it was an obvious step to create a GT40 and that happened about five years later.  Andy worked with Chris Meredith to build a demonstrator but Chris being over six feet tall found he could not fit into the car.  Andy’s car is designed around a lightweight but strong spaceframe chassis incorporating the normal front ‘A’ arm and rear radius rod suspension. The Tornado has a wider sill on the right hand side to accommodate the gear change, which then puts the centre tunnel slightly off centre, just as the original cars. 

Another manufacturer of GT40 replicas was Dax, better known for their Cobras.  They produced a limited number of their Dax 40 with input in the design stage from John Tojeiro who worked at AC Cars on the Cobras.  Although these were excellent cars the fact that they increased the height to 42” to cater for taller drivers worked against them and held the sales down. 

Hi-Tech Welding, from the same industrial estate in Kidderminster as Tornado, produced a chassis/body kit for the 40 but the quality was not to the same high standard as the competition and very few kits were sold and even fewer ever finished.

There was another manufacture by the name of Hare who were based in Ferndown in Dorset. We have or had a member who was constructing one but I have not heard anything from him for some time and whether he has finished it or not, I don’t know. I believe this was a spaceframe chassis but they also made a monocoque. I have no idea of the numbers they built and if they are still in business.

Another firm to ‘dabble’ with the GT40 was Ray Mallock’s concern RML. When researching this article I asked Chris Notley, who has been closely involved with Ray, if he could give me a few guidelines to the history of the RML GT40. His reply has made an article in itself and made my offering here look very meagre and so I have reproduced it under its own heading. So those are the manufacturers that I know of although there are bound to be a number of ‘specials’ out there such as Peter Thompson’s car which is a one off. As far as I know, the only manufacturers currently offering a complete kit in Britain are Tornado and the new kid on the block, Mark Sibley’s MDA. Mark has been around the replica industry for some time, having worked for GTD, but this is the first time he has offered a complete car of his own manufacture. As you most probably know GTD Supercars have just gone into receivership but I would not be surprised to see the GTD re-surface somewhere. It is too well respected a car to disappear altogether. Just to touch on the world wide scene, there are companies building GT40s in Australia, New Zealand and South Africa as mentioned in Andre Loubser's piece on CAV. So there still seems to be plenty of interest in this nearly 50 year old, yet not dated, body design.

Brian Magee