“This Lancia 2000 HF Coupé was my first classic car, let alone my first restoration. I naively thought ‘how hard can it be?’. The underlying aim has always been to keep it on the road, but every stage of the work has been filled with headaches, toil and heartache and the downs very much outnumbered the ups in the first few years. My dad always quietly took care of his old cars and, as a child, they just worked. I never realised what really goes into them and that fixing one problem tends to reveal another. I’ll never sell it, though. There have been many roadside moments when I’ve phoned my wife in despair to tell her I’m done with it, but then she’s talked me round. It’s there to make memories and there’s simply too much pain and joy tied up in it for me to say goodbye. It’s been the perfect storm for a car that most people would have thought was destined for the scrapheap. For better or worse, I stopped that from happening.”
 
Robin Mann
Art expert and vintage watch dealer