The truck sat in a warehouse getting dusty for a long time, then the warehouses were getting knocked down for a new housing estate so it got moved to another warehouse where a lot of vintage Jaguars were stored. One Sunday night, a gang of teenagers broke in and smashed up all the cars, driving them into each other and setting them on fire. My truck got wheeled out, the hood got thrown on the floor and driven over. For good measure they crashed into it a few times as well. As it was there as a favour, it wasn’t insured in any way, so it’s down to me to repair it.

I couldn’t bring myself to go and look at what damage had been done to it, but a friend of mine who is a bodyman offered to look at the damage and give me an opinion as to if it was repairable as a favour. We drove down, and found it sat outside, where it’s been for the past few months it turns out. Bare metal and British weather don’t mix that well, and a lot of the spares in the back were now well and truly rusted too. After looking it all over, my mate reckoned the best bet was to try and bend the hood back into some shape first and go from there. There’s no way I’m leaving it out in the open in the middle of nowhere, so it’ll have to come and sit on my drive for now. Luckily I was in my old Volvo estate, so all the boxes of parts went in the back of that and will go in my shed out of the way for now. I was gutted to see the state it was in, but it’ll be OK I think.