Why buy a Dellow?

Just look at the typical prices for immediate pre and post war sports cars and then look at a Dellow, the difference is staggering and whereas the MGs and similar require a fair bit of cheque book maintenance from the replica parts makers, just about anything on a Dellow, apart from the proprietary items like the lamps and mechanical bits, can be a DIY job.

From the chassis up the Dellow is a strong, rigid coach built car with all the main mechanicals taken from the humble Ford Prefect / Popular of that period. Up until the recent past, spares for the Ford bits have been quite scarce, but now, all the main bits are being re-manufactured and are even available on the internet. Even the period tuning parts from Aquaplane are being remanufactured.

Being built on such a rigid frame, the body is long lasting without any of the fretting due to flexure that is found on MGs, Morgans and the like and 50 years on very few cars have replacement bodies. Where replacement panels are required this is almost always due to bimetal corrosion where the alloy meets the steel frame. This is where DIY comes in, repanelling a Dellow Mkl, ll or lll body is quite straight forward and consists of nearly all flat panel and single curvature work and can quite easily be done on the car. The frame is made up from small diameter ¾ "ERW steel tubing (available from your local steel stockholder) and is easily replaced. The alloy panels are held in place by wrapping the edges over the steel tubes. A type of construction made legendary by the Birdcage Maserati and the Aston Martin "Superlegerra" DBs. Only the front and rear wings and the nose cowl have double curvature.

This does not apply to the MkV which has double curvature in almost every panel.