Peter Filby: revisiting Britain’s thriving kit-car scene

The roots of the industry were well-meaning – home-assembled Specials of the 1950s and ’60s, such as Fairthorpe and Elva, led to interesting low-volume (and some not so low) makers such as Lotus.

But they also sprouted a rash of weird and often not-so-wonderful glassfibre shapes of dubious quality and, at best, acquired taste.

That is, at least, one way of looking at it.

Success Against The Odds detailed TVR’s early days

The counterargument is one of democratisation of sports cars; of swapping hard graft and a little imagination for the chance to drive something closer to fantasy than the rusted family saloon you sacrificed to achieve it.

This intrigue was probably the fuel that ignited Peter’s career.

‘Probably’ will be a feature of this story. As we sit in his kitchen, across a table filled with a lifetime of motoring books and magazines that bear his name, it’s a struggle to piece together perfectly the patchwork of publications that make up his working life.

Alternative Cars was Peter’s first kit-car magazine

Absolutely apparent after a cup of coffee in his convivial company, however, is that the particulars are not so important.

What shines through is a single-minded determination to tell stories about a corner of our industry that he (mostly) loved.

“I’m really proud of what we did,” he says. “I wasn’t brought up through the lower echelons of motoring journalism; I just went ahead and produced the magazines I wanted.”

The Kougar Launched in 1976 with a whiff of Frazer Nash, and based on easily sourced (at the time) Jaguar bits

Peter had always been interested in unusual cars. Before picking up a pen, he worked for specialist manufacturers including Davrian and the lesser-known Powerspeed, of limited Volkswagen-based beach-buggy fame.

But it was while driving around in his Unipower GT that a girlfriend suggested he write about it – a story he subsequently sold to Custom Car magazine but that was never printed.

Undeterred, Peter found further freelance adventures with appearances in more mainstream titles such as Auto Enthusiast, Autocar and CAR.

He landed a column in Hot Car magazine called Kit Snips, shining a light on the oddball material glassfibre that was growing in popularity through the 1970s.

The Cox GTM was launched in the late ’60s to be a Ferrari Dino you could build in your shed

He was certainly finding plenty of readers – but had he discovered a gap in the market?

More toes in the water to find out. The first of his books was published: The Amazing Sports Car Journal appeared in 1973, penned under the pseudonym Jasper Wilkins.

While not the very last word in production values, even for the period, time has been kind – its 64 pages dedicated to specialist sports cars from Ashley and Baja to Ogle, Unipower and Viking.

Marlin was initially a Triumph Herald-based kit, but later used a Morris Marina donor before moving to Ford Cortina running gear for a 2+2 version

In 1976, Success Against The Odds profiled TVR’s early history. Peter had graduated to hardback and the story unfolded over 224 pages.

He had other books in the pipeline and was now convinced the hunger for non-mainstream metal (or plastic) was enough to provide a bigger opportunity.

Plans quickly took shape for what would become his first self-published kit-car magazine: Alternative Cars.

The space-age, Beetle-based Nova is arguably one of the most recognised kit cars of them all

Billed as ‘The complete guide to motoring individuality’, it tapped directly into the freedom of expression provided by turning spanners in your own garage.

An eclectic mix of home-brewed Specials filled the pages: replicas, hot rods, roadsters and beach buggies.

Two editions were published in 1979 before it went bimonthly, with a broadened editorial focus also to include production sports cars.

Jago Geeps started out as Ford 105E-based kits until the mid-’70s, when Mk1 Escorts died instead to create this Willys Jeep rip-off

“Alternative Cars was about grown-up cars of a specialist nature,” Peter says.

“They might be electric, or conversions of Lotus Europas or Jaguars, with the odd quality kit car for good measure.”

Looking back, it was a bold presentation. Most covers were a single image of a chosen vehicle free from any text trying to sell the magazine besides the masthead, itself a charmingly period logo design.

It led to a one-off international edition and a handful of limited-run titles, such as Roadsters and Replicars (which is pretty self-explanatory) and GTS – a single-issue attempt to further blur the line with production-car content.

‘The idea was to focus wholly on the gap left by mainstream automotive media for self-build car content’

Maybe it was a hunch, or maybe the product of trial and error, but Peter soon launched a second regular publication.

Called Kit Car, the idea was to focus wholly on the gap left by mainstream automotive media for self-build car content.

By then he was into the 1980s, the kit-car boom was gathering pace and options for knocked-down glassfibre and steel kits for those wishing to reincarnate Beetles, Escorts, Minis and Cortinas were plentiful.

Which Kit? was born in 1987

Sussex-based Dutton Cars – one of the bigger manufacturers of the period – had a staff of 80 by that stage and was loading more than 20 kits a week on to the trailers of its excited customers. That’s more than 1000 kits per year.

Sadly, however, Peter was about to hit a speed bump. His magazine distributor went bust in early 1984 and took a lump of his balance sheet with it.

Unable to recover, both Alternative Cars and Kit Car were absorbed by the printer in exchange for unpaid debt.

Originally a design concept for developing countries, William Towns’ utopian Hustler was made from flat glass and glassfibre

“Life was a struggle during that time,” he recalls. Unwittingly, Peter had spawned a competitor to an idea he’d barely had the chance to give any flight.

In the hands of the printer – and most of the original editorial team – Kit Car was fast becoming a success. Worse, the bigger players in publishing were sniffing around the same market.

“A lot of people asked why I tried to survive, but it was the only thing I could do,” says Peter. “I was addicted to producing magazines.”

This was evident in his strategy.

The Midas was conceived as an update to the Mini Marcos

Over the few years that followed, some four or five new publications on the component-car theme failed to find sufficient readers.

The last of these – called Filby’s Component and Specialist Car – was about to draw its final breath when the publisher inspired a rebrand. In 1987, Which Kit? was born.

From the beginning, it provided grown-up commentary on an often unsophisticated industry. Even that name borrowed something from more serious, functional titles that took the stress out of white-goods purchases.

Gordon Murray was a fan of the Midas; he built one to his own upgraded specification

It was almost as if every household needed to fabricate a vehicle from glassfibre, but for goodness’ sake don’t buy the wrong one.

To be fair, the industry was hardly stuttering at this point. Halo designs such as Richard Oakes’ canopy-roofed, Beetle-based Nova and William Towns’ utopian wedge-of-glass Hustler had helped propel interest in kit cars to new heights.

From more or less flat-pack Moke-style, Mini-based Scamps to elegant Kougars assembled using old Jaguar components, driveways across the nation were being filled with disassembled automotive dreams.

Some of them were even being built, too…

The Scamp may be painful to look at, but it was shockingly cheap to build

“It always was a mixture of sensational and very ordinary,” Peter smiles.

He recounts a story of McLaren using a pair of Ultima chassis as development mules for the F1 supercar (a process Gordon Murray repeated recently to test the V12 destined for his latest T.50).

A visit to any kit-car show in the 1990s would reward not only with expertly engineered, mid-engined mongrel hypercars, but also inch-perfect GT40s and quality Cobra replicas.

The Sylva Striker was the longest-lived of an impressive range of cars offered by Sylva in the ’80s and ’90s

“Some of the cars displayed over the years were shocking,” he pauses, shuffling slightly in his seat.

“They were appalling heaps of panels… I used to leave cars out [of the magazines] because I thought they were crap, but people would complain.”

The scene was tribal. People would develop huge emotional attachment to vehicles not only because of the time and money invested, but also because – for better or worse – they had exercised their freedom to make these creations their own.

Tim Dutton was the UK’s most successful kit-car maker; the Phaeton (above) was an evolution of his Lotus-based P1

The gulf between bad and good cars was not only dictated by effort at the factories, but also by how capable the home mechanic proved to be.

That you needed only an MoT to take to the road couldn’t fail to leave a stain on the industry.

At least until Single Vehicle Approval (SVA) arrived in 1998 to clean things up a bit.

Every industry has its chaff, though, and the wheat of the kit-car world was often unfairly dismissed.

The Dutton Phaeton worked through Triumph and Ford components as it pushed into the mainstream

Those who knew where to look would find genuine quality – kits from brands such as Westfield, Sylva and Midas, not to mention Caterham, would go together exactly as described in comprehensive documentation, built by studious customers with well-equipped garages.

As his adventures with Alternative Cars had already proved, Peter saw these ‘top end’ companies as the bedfellows of low-volume specialist manufacturers such as TVR; the only difference was that the former presented the option to assemble the vehicle yourself.

But production cars had no place in Which Kit?.

‘The wheat of the kit car world was often unfairly dismissed. Those who knew where to look would find genuine quality’

The many books and one-off magazines Filby produced during the UK specialist car boom hid another attempt to broaden out into the mainstream.

Called Carrera, it was an automotive lifestyle magazine that landed just before GQ but, if the boom in mens’ magazines that followed is any barometer – not to mention motoring titles such as Max Power tapping into broader culture – perhaps 1987 was just a handful of years too soon.

No matter in the long run, however. Which Kit?’s loyal following, with revenue bolstered by books and a busy calendar of British kit-car events, carried Peter’s small empire into the new millennium.

Boxes of books and magazines – and a Cobra replica – fill Peter’s garage

Even as SVA became Individual Vehicle Approval, further ratcheting up legislation and acting as a brake on the industry, his support was undimmed – right up until the moment he sold up in 2012. The title is now reimagined as Complete Kit Car magazine, with new owner Performance Publishing.

At his home, as Peter puts away those boxes of books and pulls closed the garage doors, we grab our coffee cups and walk past what looks like a wedge-shaped Mini Moke under a car port.

It’s a Siva Mule: an open, Mini-based buggy originally made in the early 1970s – and the polar opposite of the immaculate Cobra replica tucked away from the elements on the other side of the garage wall.

Peter Filby in his garage, surrounded by those things that mean the most to him

“It’s a fun little thing that we used to keep at the offices in Reigate,” Peter laughs. “We’d use it for sandwich runs and to pop to the Post Office.”

It seems symbolic. Only 12 were made and, unfairly or otherwise, it might well be lost to the world but for the shelter of Peter’s lean-to.

It’s fair to say the kit-car industry owes a similar debt to this man and his varied adventures in specialist automotive publishing.

Images: Max Edleston/Performance Publishing

Thanks to: Performance Publishing

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