Bodywork

The zoom bodywork was created by Vignale in Turin in 1959. As a prototype, next to no attention was given to rust prevention. Not surprisingly by the late 1960's a substantial amount of rot had set into the steel bodywork. By the time Neil Revington bought the car in 1974 the shell had been damaged, repaired and plastered in vast amounts of filler over some very dodgy pop riveted repairs. Fortunately, even though these repairs have needed to be removed, the vast majority of the bodywork is original and salvageable.

It was in this condition that Neil took the car to Donington Park, shortly after purchase to display beside the only TRS that was roadworthy at the time. Here the body was removed to show the lengthened chassis.  

 The body resided in various locations for many years looking rather disheveled whilst life, work and children got in the way. From time to time some work was completed notably to the floors and inner wings, but the big push started in the winter of 2019/20 when the central section of the body was finalised. The major job was to reverse the process of constructing this part of the car that would have culminated in the door glass being cut (different one side to the other) to fit the hole. At Vignale's workshops, wooden templates would have been taken then glass cut to suit these, these glasses being unique to one car. This explains why hand made cars seem to have perfectly fitting door glass, that is because they are cut to suit one door glass aperture uniquely.

As the original door glasses from the Zoom were still intact, wooden templates could be taken and fitted to the doors and winder mechanism, then the whole body moved about to achieve best fit to the wooden windows.

The car has now been disassembled once again and all the parts shot blasted. removable parts were carefully done in the cabinet, whilst the main front and back sections were done in the workshop using a vacuum cleaner type shot where the media (in this case a fine aggregate) comes out of the gun in the normal way but rather than flying off everywhere, is immediately vacuumed up inside the brush around the gun visible in the photographs. 

Now the body is reassembled ready for the final body build

and the work goes on.....