Fairthorpe: The Car Your Mad Uncle Built in His Shed

The British motor industry has a peculiar genius. On the one hand, it has produced some of the most magnificent, world-beating cars ever seen. On the other, it has an unparalleled talent for creating gloriously shoddy, plastic-bodied sports cars in sheds. And for a brief, wonderful, and probably quite damp period after the war, the undisputed king of this very specific art form was a company called Fairthorpe. A Fairthorpe was not so much a car as it was a collection of other people's unwanted parts, loosely held together by optimism and a wobbly fibreglass body. It was cheap, it was cheerful, and it was almost certainly trying to kill you.

The company was the brainchild of one Donald "Bunty" Scott-Moncrieff, a man who possessed the sort of magnificent, larger-than-life name that could only belong to an eccentric British car builder. Based in a small workshop in Buckinghamshire, Fairthorpe was at the very heart of the post-war kit car boom. The principle was simple: take the sturdy, reliable, and dirt-cheap engine and chassis from a boring family saloon like a Triumph Herald or a Standard Ten, throw away the dull steel body, and clothe the oily bits in a rakish, lightweight, and often astonishingly badly-fitting fibreglass shell.

The Electron and Other Dubious Creations

The most famous early Fairthorpe was the Electron. It was a tiny, open-topped sports car that looked a bit like a startled frog, and it was powered by a Coventry Climax engine, which meant it was actually surprisingly quick. It was a proper, back-to-basics sports car. There was no roof, no heater, and the doors were merely a suggestion. It was a car for men who wore tweed jackets and believed that hypothermia was a sign of a good day out.

This was followed by a dizzying array of other models, like the Atom, the Atomota, and the Electrina. They were all variations on the same theme: tiny, plastic, and powered by whatever cheap engine the company could get its hands on that week. The quality of a Fairthorpe was, it's fair to say, variable. Because you could buy one in kit form to build yourself, the final product depended entirely on whether you were a competent mechanic or a complete ham-fisted idiot who shouldn't be allowed near a screwdriver. Many, it seems, were the latter.

A Genuine Giant-Killer

And yet, for all its shed-built charm and questionable quality, the Fairthorpe Electron was a genuinely quick little car. Because it weighed about the same as a packet of crisps, its little 1100cc engine was enough to give it startling performance. In club racing, in the hands of a brave and talented driver, a well-sorted Electron could - and often did - humiliate much more powerful and expensive machinery from the likes of MG and Triumph.

It was the ultimate expression of Colin Chapman's "add lightness" philosophy, albeit on a shoestring budget. While Chapman was using advanced aerodynamics and stressed-skin monocoques, Fairthorpe was just making their cars out of plastic and hoping for the best. On a tight, twisty circuit, this approach worked brilliantly. On a long, fast straight, it was probably terrifying.

An Unfortunate-Looking GT

Emboldened by its racing success, Fairthorpe decided to get ambitious. They decided to build a proper, grown-up Grand Tourer. The result was the TX-GT, a car that, sadly, looked like it had been designed in the dark by someone who had only had a car described to them over the phone. It was a long, awkward-looking coupe with a bizarre, frowning face. It was still powered by a Triumph engine, but this time it was the big, six-cylinder from the GT6. It was quick, but it was also expensive, and it was trying to compete with cars that were not only faster, but also didn't look like they were melting.

The TX-GT and its successor, the TX-S, were a flop. They were a perfect lesson that what works for a lightweight, cheap-as-chips club racer doesn't necessarily work for a sophisticated GT car. The company had flown too close to the sun, and its wobbly, fibreglass wings couldn't take the heat.

The Slow Fizzle into Obscurity

Like so many of the small, shed-based British car makers of the era, Fairthorpe couldn't survive. The rise of more professional, mass-produced sports cars from the likes of MG and Triumph, and later, the Japanese, made the kit-car proposition seem less and less appealing. People decided they quite liked having cars with doors that shut properly and roofs that didn't leak. The world moved on, and Fairthorpe simply fizzled out.

The story of Fairthorpe is the story of the British amateur spirit at its most glorious and most flawed. It was a company built on enthusiasm, ingenuity, and a magnificent disregard for things like panel gaps and build quality. The cars were often a bit rubbish, but they were never, ever boring. They were a testament to a time when any man with a shed, a set of spanners, and a dream could build a sports car. And for that, they deserve to be celebrated.