First Swallow of the summer

This time of year always makes me think of my old Swallow Doretti which I discovered tucked in the back of a garage in Swansea in 1989. It was in a very poor condition and served as the sleeping place for a Doberman (and also it's toilet) At the time I owned and drove a Triumph TR4 (will do a story on that in the future) which I had to sell to make room for the Doretti as I only have a single garage. My wife thought I was mad when I got the car (if it could be classed as one at that time) home. It was stinking of dog poo, old oil and quietly rusting metal. However, I knew it was a rarity and well worth the trouble of restoring, six years later I was finally proved right, but it was a long, hard six years. The Swallow Doretti was designed back in the 1950s by an engineer named Frank Rainbow for The Swallow Sidecar Company, which evolved into Jaguar.

Only about 290 were made and many of those went abroad, mine was chassis number 1181. Dorettis have an aluminium skin over steel frame and a chrome-molybdenum chassis which was very, very strong. The running gear and engine was TR2 1998 cc straight four. If I've imbedded a flash slideshow correctly you should see some photos of the car before restoration work took place. Over the next few days I'll update the blog with more photos of how the restoration went and how the car finally turned out. As you can see, when I started the work I still had my hair...