How this fantastic car came to be mine

In 1997 my best friend’s dad, who is a huge petrol head, finished up restoring this 1973 TR6 PI. The car had only been on the road for 10 years before being parked up and left in a shed. This was somewhere in Ayrshire in Scotland. Scotland’s roads are not the kindness to any car due to the copious amounts of salt that are lovingly spread over our roads every winter. Oh yeah, winter is not just a one month cold spell. We wish. Not many cars built in 1973 had the corrosion proofing that can be added to modern cars. Due to this there are so many cars now rotting away in a garage. Luckily for my Tr6 she had a very nice registration. The registration by itself was worth what the car was bought for. Now I love my mate and his family very much, but sadly the restoration of the TR6 was not to the standard that could be achieved with the addition of loads of cash and a fancy garage. But at the time I did not have the knowledge of cars to see this and just fell in love with it. Thanks to the generosity of my then employer, Mark, I was in a position to buy it. So buy it I did. Now at the time she became my regular car and she was very reliable. This was mainly due to the fact that the PI system was now removed and had been replaced by a very economical pair of twin SU carbs. But the strangle hold these carbs had on the car was drastic. I felt like the 150hp that should have been there was now down to around 110hp. I felt sorry for the US market getting this 110hp model. Well sadly for me after only having the car a year I had to go oversees to work and the car ended up being neglected back in a garage in Scotland once again. But I ended up settling down in Croatia with my now wife and decided that it was time to bring her out and drive her over to Croatia where I could once again enjoy her to the fullest. This was a journey my good friend Gordon made with me. We set off from Queensferry on the high speed ferry to Zebrugge. In the morning we left the port and headed south. The weather was terrible going through Europe but she never missed a beat and many a keen motorist gave us the thumbs up passing us. We eventually got the Split in Croatia and the car was parked up again. It turned out that my wife’s old and dear friend worked on old cars. So I decided to let him have a look at the car. The reason being that I wanted the panels aligned properly and maybe new paint. So that was it. The dye was cast for the cars second restoration which was now only 6 years after the first one. So the photos and comments to follow will show you the work involved and the fun I have now had with the car I fell out of love with and then fell back in love with.