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Where do our old cars go? Most, we hate to admit, fade into obscurity, never to emerge again.
By a stroke of luck, however, Trevor Andrews recently became reacquainted with a car from his past: He once owned our Tornado Typhoon project car. The registration plate gave it away.
He purchased this car around 1968, he recalls; the price was 87 pounds and the seller a scrapyard in Rochdale, a town in greater Manchester, England. At the time, he was a student and apprentice with A.V. Roe, an aircraft manufacturer.
“I just stumbled across the Tornado and couldn’t believe the price for a sexy-looking sports car that an impoverished student could afford,” he told us with a grin. “I liked the idea of it being easy to work on.”
Soon after he moved to the nearby town of Stockport, he drove the car to a nurses’ dance at the local hospital. That was the night he met his future wife. “I took her for a spin and promptly ran over the exhaust box as it fell of!” he continued. Good news, though: “She still married me.”
The Tornado delivered its characteristically mixed blessing of semi-reliable service over the next few years. At one point Trevor considered updating the car to a Ford Anglia 105E drivetrain. He fitted the engine, but once he tried to mount the rear axle, he realized he’d bitten off more than he could chew. That’s why, he explained, we found evidence of an engine swap that hadn’t been completed.
“Over the next couple of years I stored it at my dad’s house while I went to do my master’s,” he said. “After graduating–again–my wife and I moved to Crewkerne in Somerset around 1974 or ’75. There I did some more work on the car, primarily taking off the roof and making it removable.”
A job offer from Canadair in Montreal marked the end of his relationship with the Tornado. “The paperwork I received alluded to the fact that I should not bring any car over that did not meet the emission control regulations,” he recalled. “So I sold it.” (Later, he laments, he found out that he likely could have imported the Tornado by simply registering it as its donor vehicle, the 1939 Ford Popular.)
Mr. and Mrs. Andrews have since retired to Florida, not too far from our headquarters. They recently visited the Tornado, more than 40 years after Trevor parted with it. “It was truly amazing to be able to be able to see and sit in the car that created so many memories from our more youthful days,” he explained.
“If it hadn’t been for the fact that it had the same registration plate, I probably would not have known it was the same car. The transformation into a car worthy of a concours showing was quite dramatic. The coincidence that we both finished up in Florida after almost 50 years is a story I recount many times with my friends.”
During his time with the Tornado, Trevor Andrews had plenty of adventures–including meeting his wife, Fiona, and a trip with a friend to Germany it. And then there’s the time the goat jumped into Trevor’s lap to eat his map.
This article is from a past issue of the magazine. Like stories like this? You’ll see every article as soon as it's published, and get access to our full digital archive, by subscribing to Classic Motorsports.Subscribe now.
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Comments
Great to read about Trevor Andrews and his past adventures with your Tornado Typhoon. It's a really entertaining article ... love the goat!!! I am the registrar for the Tornado Register which is part of the Fairthorpe Sports Car Club. This year we celebrate 60 years since the first Tornado was launched to the publc, it was indeed a Typhoon, Classic Motorsports is on the ball.
Trevor we would love to have you visit the Tornado Cars facebook page where you can see some other good examples.
Dave Malins
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