Fergus Walkinshaw and his FW Motorsport team are on the final countdown to RESTORATION LIVE at Silverstone Classic, 29-31 July, where the Chipping Norton-based outfit will take up the almighty challenge of completely restoring a 1983 Range Rover with parts and accessories bought from eBay.
Fergus and his team of four mechanics will be up against the clock and working in front of a live audience across the three-day festival. FW Motorsport will then unveil the completed vehicle with a ‘big reveal’ this Sunday, on the Mike Brewer Car Clinic stage. The finished first-generation Range Rover will also be put through its paces on the 4x4 off-road course.
With the restoration to be completed with parts sourced from the eight million live listings of components available on eBay, home to one of the largest collections of motoring products worldwide, the project presents an exciting new challenge for FW Motorsport. For 25 year-old Walkinshaw, however, ‘from scratch’ race car builds and from the ground-up road car restorations are nothing new.
Son of the late legendary F1, sports and touring car team principal, Tom Walkinshaw, Fergus is an experienced sportscar racer and a talented automotive engineer. The Scotsman built his first Ginetta G55 in less than 90 days at the age of 20 in 2011 before founding FW Motorsport 18 months later. The team went on to build a second Ginetta G55 in under two weeks ready for the 2014 season. Prior to eBay RESTORATION LIVE, Fergus and his team of highly experienced professional engineers have restored numerous makes and models of vehicles.
Utilising both the website and eBay app, Fergus has been able to track down around 100 parts and components in advance of the epic RESTORATION LIVE mission. Fergus commented: “For us, eBay has always been a fantastic source for out of production parts throughout various ground-up rebuild and restoration projects. We’ve found everything from the everyday through to some really hard to find parts.
“Thankfully, the majority of parts for the first-generation Range Rovers are fairly common, up until around 1995. However, the particular iteration we are restoring – the 4-door ‘hard dash’, ‘exposed hinge’ made between 1981 and 1985 – features trim and interior parts specific to those years of manufacture, prior to the 1986 facelift. As those parts are no longer in production from the original manufacturer, they are a lot harder to come by, but I could rely on using eBay to search for old stock, used, and reproduction parts.
“A project of this size against the clock dictates meticulous pre-event planning and scheduling of the restoration works. With the parts sourcing process complete in plenty of time, we are now concentrating on the final details before we get to Silverstone. We’re more than ready to rise to the challenge.”
Visitors to Silverstone Classic can watch Fergus and his team in action on the eBay RESTORATION LIVE stand, situated on the Copse Runway in the Purple Zone, next to the Big Wheel, from Friday morning.
The FW Motorsport, eBay UK and Silverstone Classic social media channels will be posting constant updates throughout the weekend. Just follow #RestoLive.
For further event and ticket information visit www.silverstoneclassic.com
