THE VINCENT HURRICANE
The Vincent brothers, and a dream
As with all great ideas of our time it happened in a pub....
Martin and Robin Vincent had just attended the first ever kit car show in the UK. It was being run by the Marcos Owners Club at Donnington who offered an open invitation to all glass fibre bodied cars. Robin went along with his older brother Martin who at the time was inexplicably an owner of a Fairethorpe Atom/Electron 'type thing'. Hundreds of cars of all denominations turned up and several specialist magazines were spawned as a result. The popularity of this show surprised the brothers, the organisers as well as the public and highlighted the demand for unusual, fun sports cars.
This was in the early eighties and Martin and Robin began thinking out loud. The Triumph Spitfire/MG Midget/MGB Roadster had all been out of production for quite a while so there were no open topped British sports cars available brand new. Except, of course for the Aston Martin V8 Volante which was a little bit out of the reach of your average man in the street. The only other affordable sports car that came to their minds was the Fiat X1/9, which was really a targa at the end of the day. It was to be a few years to come before VW/Peugeot/Ford began lopping the roofs off luke-warm family hatchbacks.
So, after a few pints and the vision of a packed Kit Car show thronging with a sports car hungry public with bulging wallets the boys came to the decision. Both of them were at loose ends, Robin having been made redundant and Martin just having sold his motorcycle courier company. Apparently a girlfriend's father owned Stonor Farm near Henley on Thames with several empty barns. It all seemed ordained to happen, as if by a higher force.
The only barn with an electricity supply was rented, cleaned out and turned into a rudimentary industrial unit with painted walls, power points and strip lighting. It also had a very good canteen in the form of the Stonor Arms public house a half mile away.
With Robin's experience of Triumph Herald/Spitfire/GT6's it was decided to use the Spit/GT6 as a basis for their car. With the Triumph being a separate chassis design they could utilise all of Triumph's hard work and design a glass fibre body replacement (that didn't rust as soon as you looked at it). The brothers had previous experience of the material as in their youth as they had built several GRP canoes. It was almost impossible, if not uneconomic at the time to obtain and fit original steel body panels - so the decision was final. From the outset they decided that all of the Triumph fittings and fixtures should be used to save on cost, ease of parts availability and development expenses.
The first car was bought - a rusty old Spitfire that cost them all of £80. The wheels it rolled on were super-slots which were recycled and appear in some of the early publicity shots. The car was immediately set upon, with all of the exterior panel work removed. They kept the important parts intact such as A-pillars, door slam panels. cockpit surround, bulkheads and inner arches. After this they built a plywood egg-box construction to form the general outline of the exterior bodywork and (using instructions from aging library books) filled the gaps with Plaster of Paris.
After shaving off material and adding it here and there by hand they finally had sculpted the shape they wanted. Unfortunately the aging books were well out of date and as the plaster dried out it shrunk and sagged causing ripples in the mould buck between the plywood ribs. After a lot more hard work they finally had the buck in a condition they were happy with.
They also discovered surf board foam (too late) which is what was used on subsequent moulds such as the boot lid and other components and is a lot more easier to work with than wood and plaster. The shape of the Vincent Hurricane had been born, with all of the necessary moulds taken from this plaster buck. The moulds for the interior were taken straight from the Triumph's original steelwork.
Leading to the kit we have for sale today
We are currently working on the finer details, and will be launching this in the near future, stay tuned to our social media pages for updates as we make them.
