The History of Ashley Laminates
By Robert Daniels and John Harrison
After the war, there was a shortage of cars and the priority was the export market. One way to get a new-looking vehicle was to buy an old Austin 7 or small Ford, remove the body and put a new fibreglass sporting one on it and you had your own sportscar, generally referred to as a special. Glass fibre was obviously a new material then and the specials industry exploited its lightness and suitability for low-volume car body manufacture. A large number of small companies were set up specialising in making such bodies and several were based in north London or the nearby Home Counties. Eventually the bottom fell out of the market due to a combination of factors, particularly changes to purchase tax making these cars more expensive, the switch to cars with monocoque construction and the advent of cheap sports cars, particularly the Austin Healey Sprite & MG Midget.
The industry had largely died out by the early 1960’s, though one name survives from the companies established in this area. This is Lotus. This started in Hornsey in 1952, moving to Cheshunt in 1959 and finally to Norfolk in 1966. Other marques that started out as specials manufacturers elsewhere in the country that still operate are Ginetta, Lola, Marcos and TVR.
This article looks at the story of one company making bodies for specials,
Ashley Laminates
Ashley Laminates was founded by Keith Waddington and Peter Pellandine in 1955.
The name “Ashley” was chosen as it was derived from the name of
Peter Pellandine’s house "Ashleigh" in Woodford Green.
Their first premises were a small garage adjacent to the Robin Hood Public House, Epping New Road, Loughton. Despite the Loughton address, the premises were actually located about a mile from the town within Epping Forest.
The building was located on the north side of the pub. It was demolished in the late 1960s so the “Robin Hood” car park could be enlarged. In late 1956 Peter Pellandine split from the partnership by amicable agreement and set up Falcon Shells, another specials company. Peter had wanted to own and grow his own company which he could eventually sell to emigrate.
Falcon Shells was originally based at 23 Highbridge Street, Waltham Abbey, adjacent to the Town Hall, premises which still remain. The company also had a showroom at 52 High Street, Epping, a building which has subsequently been demolished. It later moved to 150 Great North Road Hatfield. Peter Pellandine took with him the rights and tooling to manufacture the short wheelbase bodyshell for the Ashley 750 which he continued its production as the Falcon Mark 1 and the Sports Racer which became the Falcon Mark II. The company subsequently produced other bodies until it ceased production in 1964.
After approximately two years, Ashley Laminates moved their body manufacture to the Potteries, Woodgreen Road, Upshire, retaining the “Robin Hood” premises as a showroom. Bert Miller who worked for Ashley Laminates whilst they occupied the premises adjacent to the “Robin Hood” says that, when they were based there, the first task of each day was to move completed shells outside to the front so they had room to do other work. The bodies then had to be returned at the end of the day.
It is not surprising, therefore, that the company moved to the larger premises in Upshire! According to Bert, when the company was first based in Upshire it had around nine employees. Towards the end of its time there, according to another worker Vic McDonald, it had grown to about 20 employees including the two or three normally based in the showroom.
There were three parts to the Upshire premises, the large mould shop where bodies were made, the small mould shop where smaller parts were produced and an assembly shop. In addition there was also a freestanding toilet similar to a portaloo which on one occasion was knocked over by a reversing BRS lorry which had called to collect some finished bodies to deliver to customers. Fortunately there was nobody in it at the time! There was also an open area where bodies could be stored. Sometimes, if there were no customer orders to fulfil, staff would produce models on spec and these would be left here. If a body had been left outside for a while, it required a lot of cleaning before it could be delivered.
On 1 January 1961 the company opened new premises at Bush Fair, Harlow, but the following year production of bodies ceased. The company, however, continued to manufacture fibreglass hardtops and bonnets for sports cars. Keith Waddington died a premature death in the mid-60’s and around 1972 the company was wound up. The company produced four “cars” or more strictly bodyshells:
The bodies comprised two main components plus a third if a hardtop was specified. The bonnet unit included the front wings and it hinged forward from the front of the car like on the E-Type Jaguar. The other component comprised the remainder, from the bulkhead to the rear of the car. Because of difficulties at the time with pigments and resins, sometimes the two parts would be a slightly different colour!
The cars had a conventional boot. The Sportiva featured a bootlid copied from an Alfa Romeo saloon that Keith Waddington then owned. The bodies had wheel arches fitted inside the boot area to cover the rear wheels to protect the boot contents from damage by revolving wheels. Sometimes customers who took delivery of their cars were surprised that the body came with no floor – part of the construction process involved fitting a plywood one.
The moulds had to be constructed in a number of parts so they could be dismantled to release the body when it had cured. The main join was half way up the car bodywork and to achieve as smooth a finish as possible the gap between the lower and upper parts of the mould was always filled with plasticine, this being found the most suitable material for the job.
Production figures for the bodies give an indication of the scale of the Ashley Laminate enterprise. According to the Austin Sevens Club Association, a combined total of 500 to 600 Ashley 750 and Falcon Mark I bodies were produced. We have no information or production numbers for the Sports Racer. Clearly few would have been produced as it was available for a short period and it was a specialist racer rather than a road car, though more would have been manufactured under its Falcon Mark 2 guise.
Production of the 1172 was “several hundred” according to the “Classic Kit Cars” book and the same book states “a few” Sportivas were produced. The Ashley and Falcon Registers have details of 60 Ashleys which survive, but probably more exist.
As previously alluded to, the company sold two chassis; though it seems they were ordered through Ashley but supplied by another company as Vic McDonald who worked there in 1960/61 never saw one. One was marketed as the Regent Chassis. A contemporary advertisement for it claimed it offered “the best performance/price ratio of any product available for home assembly and “performance of approx. 108 m.p.h. can be attained”. Suggested engines were from the Austin A35, A55 or Ford 100E.
The second was known as the Mark VI chassis which somewhat begs the question as to what happened to Marks I to V! This was primarily intended as a chassis for use with the Sportiva body and included fibreglass floor and moulded rear seats. (see picture).
Ashley also offered a range of products for special builders. An advertisement in January 1959 “Car Mechanics” mentions radiators, header tanks, lighting sets, steel tubing, sheet aluminium, various suspension parts, water pumps, tyres, tubes and wheels. These would have been bought-in components.
The company also made bonnets and hardtops for other mass-produced sports cars such as the Midget, MGB, Spitfire and E-Type, but it seems to have been particularly noted for its bonnets and hardtops for the Mark I or “frogeye” Austin Healey Sprite. It is interesting that, whilst the advent of the Sprite helped bring about the demise of many special body builders, Ashley stayed in business longer than most by producing components for it! Ashley was the first company to manufacture an alternative bonnet for the Sprite. The bonnet of the Sprite with its “frogeye” lights was not very attractive and replacing this with a lightweight glass-fibre Ashley one improved the car’s appearance and also, of course, its performance.
The Ashley bonnet used the headlights, grille and badge from the original car. The Ashley Sprite hardtop made the car look somewhat top heavy and ugly, so if you added one of these to your car it counteracted the improvement in appearance achieved from the new bonnet! The reason for the ugly appearance of the hardtop was that it had to incorporate the side screens and rear window used for the 1172 hardtop as alternative components were not available to Ashley.
The Sprite hardtop used what was then a new product called Flockspray, a nylon fibre coating. To avoid a bare fibreglass roof inside the car, the underside of it was coated with an adhesive and the Flockspray was sprayed onto that to give a velvet-like appearance. Flockspray was subsequently used on the inside of the Sportiva roof also.
After the coating had been applied, when the body was turned right way up, a shower of excess powder would fall out. Sometimes staff would play a joke on colleagues by contriving to get them to be standing underneath a body as it was turned and they would be covered in this powder!
One particularly noteworthy Ashley, an 1172 hardtop, was WUV 19 used by the sales manager. This had been finished to a very high standard with metallic blue paint. When a hardtop was supplied a rubber gasket was fitted between it and the rest of the body and this left a panel gap between the two, but in this case the gap had been filled. The car was usually on display in the showroom and used in contemporary advertising. A few years later the same car featured in a major tyre company’s national poster campaign.
Finally we should mention that Ashley Laminates had one small but notable place in motoring history. In Britain the Reliant Company is known for its manufacture of three-wheeler cars and also its innovative Scimitar GTE. A less well-known aspect of the company’s work has been helping develop other countries’ motor industries.
One such project with Autocars of Israel was the development of a sports car known as the Sabra, a name was chosen as it was the name of a cactus found only in Israel and used as its national emblem. Sabra was also an affectionate term used to describe a young active Israeli. This was then produced in England as Reliant’s first four-wheeled car, and the Reliant Sabre was chosen as a suitable name by a simple adaptation from the Israeli one. To provide a body for these two cars Reliant acquired the rights to and adapted that of the Ashley 1172. (see "Sabra Story" page on this site)
Information in this article comes from:
Bert Miller, Vic McDonald, Colin Ward, http://www.motorsnippets.com, http://www.peterenn.clara.net, http://www.scimitarweb.com, the Austin Sevens Club Association, Epping Forest District Council Planning Department and the books, “Ford Special Builders Manual”, “British Specialist Cars” by Chris Rees (Windrowe & Green Automotive, 1993) and “Classic Kit Cars – Vol 2” by Chris Rees (Filby Files, 1997).
After the war, there was a shortage of cars and the priority was the export market. One way to get a new-looking vehicle was to buy an old Austin 7 or small Ford, remove the body and put a new fibreglass sporting one on it and you had your own sportscar, generally referred to as a special. Glass fibre was obviously a new material then and the specials industry exploited its lightness and suitability for low-volume car body manufacture. A large number of small companies were set up specialising in making such bodies and several were based in north London or the nearby Home Counties. Eventually the bottom fell out of the market due to a combination of factors, particularly changes to purchase tax making these cars more expensive, the switch to cars with monocoque construction and the advent of cheap sports cars, particularly the Austin Healey Sprite & MG Midget.
The industry had largely died out by the early 1960’s, though one name survives from the companies established in this area. This is Lotus. This started in Hornsey in 1952, moving to Cheshunt in 1959 and finally to Norfolk in 1966. Other marques that started out as specials manufacturers elsewhere in the country that still operate are Ginetta, Lola, Marcos and TVR.
This article looks at the story of one company making bodies for specials,
Ashley Laminates
Ashley Laminates was founded by Keith Waddington and Peter Pellandine in 1955.
The name “Ashley” was chosen as it was derived from the name of
Peter Pellandine’s house "Ashleigh" in Woodford Green.
Their first premises were a small garage adjacent to the Robin Hood Public House, Epping New Road, Loughton. Despite the Loughton address, the premises were actually located about a mile from the town within Epping Forest.
The building was located on the north side of the pub. It was demolished in the late 1960s so the “Robin Hood” car park could be enlarged. In late 1956 Peter Pellandine split from the partnership by amicable agreement and set up Falcon Shells, another specials company. Peter had wanted to own and grow his own company which he could eventually sell to emigrate.
Falcon Shells was originally based at 23 Highbridge Street, Waltham Abbey, adjacent to the Town Hall, premises which still remain. The company also had a showroom at 52 High Street, Epping, a building which has subsequently been demolished. It later moved to 150 Great North Road Hatfield. Peter Pellandine took with him the rights and tooling to manufacture the short wheelbase bodyshell for the Ashley 750 which he continued its production as the Falcon Mark 1 and the Sports Racer which became the Falcon Mark II. The company subsequently produced other bodies until it ceased production in 1964.
After approximately two years, Ashley Laminates moved their body manufacture to the Potteries, Woodgreen Road, Upshire, retaining the “Robin Hood” premises as a showroom. Bert Miller who worked for Ashley Laminates whilst they occupied the premises adjacent to the “Robin Hood” says that, when they were based there, the first task of each day was to move completed shells outside to the front so they had room to do other work. The bodies then had to be returned at the end of the day.
It is not surprising, therefore, that the company moved to the larger premises in Upshire! According to Bert, when the company was first based in Upshire it had around nine employees. Towards the end of its time there, according to another worker Vic McDonald, it had grown to about 20 employees including the two or three normally based in the showroom.
There were three parts to the Upshire premises, the large mould shop where bodies were made, the small mould shop where smaller parts were produced and an assembly shop. In addition there was also a freestanding toilet similar to a portaloo which on one occasion was knocked over by a reversing BRS lorry which had called to collect some finished bodies to deliver to customers. Fortunately there was nobody in it at the time! There was also an open area where bodies could be stored. Sometimes, if there were no customer orders to fulfil, staff would produce models on spec and these would be left here. If a body had been left outside for a while, it required a lot of cleaning before it could be delivered.
On 1 January 1961 the company opened new premises at Bush Fair, Harlow, but the following year production of bodies ceased. The company, however, continued to manufacture fibreglass hardtops and bonnets for sports cars. Keith Waddington died a premature death in the mid-60’s and around 1972 the company was wound up. The company produced four “cars” or more strictly bodyshells:
- The 750. As its name implies, this was intended to fit pre-war Austin 7’s which had a 750cc engine. It was initially built in two sizes to fit 6 ft 3in and 6ft 9in wheelbase chassis, but when Falcon Bodyshells was formed, as already indicated, that company took with it the rights to build the shorter wheelbase version and Ashley just manufactured the longer version. According to a price list dated 1 April 1958, it had a length of 11 ft 4 in and a weight of 85 lbs, though a lightweight racing version of 70 lbs was also available. The bodyshell cost £78 and the optional “Gran Turismo” hardtop an extra £25. Credit facilities were available. By the time Vic McDonald started working at Ashley in 1961 the 750 was virtually obsolete, there being no longer demand for it, as he recalls very few of these bodies being produced.
- The Sports Racer. This was built for wheelbases from 6ft 11in to 7ft 4in and was produced for a few months from early 1956 until Peter Pelladine left to form Falcon Shells and it became the Falcon Mark II. The body was primarily designed for track rather than everyday road use and could be mated to an Elva chassis. Thus, a number of race cars at the time used it.
- The 1172. This was built for the Ford Anglia and Popular chassis and in 1960 was lengthened to fit the Ford E93A chassis, the 1938 to 53 Ford Prefect, thus making a four-seater version an option; the Anglia and Popular chassis being 7ft 6in long whereas the Prefect one was 7ft 10in, Ashley’s also offered its own chassis which could be used with this body. Possible engines included the Ford sidevalve from the Prefect (which was 1172cc – hence the car’s name), Ford 100E and 105E, BMC A-series and MGA engines. There were options of open or closed bodywork. There was no hood available for the open version, so it was completely open, not a convertible. The closed version used the same shell as the open one, but a roof was added. In theory, this could be removed, but the top was held on by many bolts and fitting or removing them was a two-man job so in practice customers would be unlikely to do this. Side window panels were only available as an optional extra, so without these it could be quite cold inside! When side panels were ordered, these were extremely difficult to install and most owners who bought them eventually brought the car back to have them fitted. The closed bodywork versions were frequently referred to as the Ashley GT. One advanced feature of the body was the double-skinned doors. A special “U” fixing was incorporated within the fibreglass body, so no door hinges were visible, a feature still copied by TVR! An interesting book was published at this time called “Ford Special Builder’s Manual” which describes the Ashley 1172 and many of its contemporaries. This is interesting not so much for its content but rather its pedigree. Its author was given as “GB Wake” and it was published by JH Haynes & Co Ltd. GB Wake was in fact a pseudonym for John Haynes and this book was a precursor for the Haynes manuals we are all familiar with today. This book states the closed version of the car was “about £160” and the open versions were “available complete for £105. In fact this is the price for the bodyshell and the price for the closed version was exactly £160. Production lasted from 1958-61.
- The Sportiva. The “Sportiva” name might suggest that Ashley must have been way ahead of its time in adopting a name equivalent to the likes of the present-day Mondeo and Vectra, but in fact “Sportiva” is Italian for sports or sporting. The Sportiva was available as a bodyshell or with an “Ashley” chassis.
Like the 1172 it was available in open or closed form and with two or four seats. The Sportiva was an upgrade of the 1172 with a restyled front end. The rear end of the Sportiva was later restyled so it could take Ashley’s longer 8ft wheelbase chassis. Unlike the 1172 hardtop where the roof was a separate component, the Sportiva hardtop body incorporated a roof. The Sportiva was introduced in 1961, interestingly first being shown at a do-it-yourself exhibition! It, however, was a victim of the collapse of the specials market as it ceased manufacture the following year.
The bodies comprised two main components plus a third if a hardtop was specified. The bonnet unit included the front wings and it hinged forward from the front of the car like on the E-Type Jaguar. The other component comprised the remainder, from the bulkhead to the rear of the car. Because of difficulties at the time with pigments and resins, sometimes the two parts would be a slightly different colour!
The cars had a conventional boot. The Sportiva featured a bootlid copied from an Alfa Romeo saloon that Keith Waddington then owned. The bodies had wheel arches fitted inside the boot area to cover the rear wheels to protect the boot contents from damage by revolving wheels. Sometimes customers who took delivery of their cars were surprised that the body came with no floor – part of the construction process involved fitting a plywood one.
The moulds had to be constructed in a number of parts so they could be dismantled to release the body when it had cured. The main join was half way up the car bodywork and to achieve as smooth a finish as possible the gap between the lower and upper parts of the mould was always filled with plasticine, this being found the most suitable material for the job.
Production figures for the bodies give an indication of the scale of the Ashley Laminate enterprise. According to the Austin Sevens Club Association, a combined total of 500 to 600 Ashley 750 and Falcon Mark I bodies were produced. We have no information or production numbers for the Sports Racer. Clearly few would have been produced as it was available for a short period and it was a specialist racer rather than a road car, though more would have been manufactured under its Falcon Mark 2 guise.
Production of the 1172 was “several hundred” according to the “Classic Kit Cars” book and the same book states “a few” Sportivas were produced. The Ashley and Falcon Registers have details of 60 Ashleys which survive, but probably more exist.
As previously alluded to, the company sold two chassis; though it seems they were ordered through Ashley but supplied by another company as Vic McDonald who worked there in 1960/61 never saw one. One was marketed as the Regent Chassis. A contemporary advertisement for it claimed it offered “the best performance/price ratio of any product available for home assembly and “performance of approx. 108 m.p.h. can be attained”. Suggested engines were from the Austin A35, A55 or Ford 100E.
The second was known as the Mark VI chassis which somewhat begs the question as to what happened to Marks I to V! This was primarily intended as a chassis for use with the Sportiva body and included fibreglass floor and moulded rear seats. (see picture).
Ashley also offered a range of products for special builders. An advertisement in January 1959 “Car Mechanics” mentions radiators, header tanks, lighting sets, steel tubing, sheet aluminium, various suspension parts, water pumps, tyres, tubes and wheels. These would have been bought-in components.
The company also made bonnets and hardtops for other mass-produced sports cars such as the Midget, MGB, Spitfire and E-Type, but it seems to have been particularly noted for its bonnets and hardtops for the Mark I or “frogeye” Austin Healey Sprite. It is interesting that, whilst the advent of the Sprite helped bring about the demise of many special body builders, Ashley stayed in business longer than most by producing components for it! Ashley was the first company to manufacture an alternative bonnet for the Sprite. The bonnet of the Sprite with its “frogeye” lights was not very attractive and replacing this with a lightweight glass-fibre Ashley one improved the car’s appearance and also, of course, its performance.
The Ashley bonnet used the headlights, grille and badge from the original car. The Ashley Sprite hardtop made the car look somewhat top heavy and ugly, so if you added one of these to your car it counteracted the improvement in appearance achieved from the new bonnet! The reason for the ugly appearance of the hardtop was that it had to incorporate the side screens and rear window used for the 1172 hardtop as alternative components were not available to Ashley.
The Sprite hardtop used what was then a new product called Flockspray, a nylon fibre coating. To avoid a bare fibreglass roof inside the car, the underside of it was coated with an adhesive and the Flockspray was sprayed onto that to give a velvet-like appearance. Flockspray was subsequently used on the inside of the Sportiva roof also.
After the coating had been applied, when the body was turned right way up, a shower of excess powder would fall out. Sometimes staff would play a joke on colleagues by contriving to get them to be standing underneath a body as it was turned and they would be covered in this powder!
One particularly noteworthy Ashley, an 1172 hardtop, was WUV 19 used by the sales manager. This had been finished to a very high standard with metallic blue paint. When a hardtop was supplied a rubber gasket was fitted between it and the rest of the body and this left a panel gap between the two, but in this case the gap had been filled. The car was usually on display in the showroom and used in contemporary advertising. A few years later the same car featured in a major tyre company’s national poster campaign.
Finally we should mention that Ashley Laminates had one small but notable place in motoring history. In Britain the Reliant Company is known for its manufacture of three-wheeler cars and also its innovative Scimitar GTE. A less well-known aspect of the company’s work has been helping develop other countries’ motor industries.
One such project with Autocars of Israel was the development of a sports car known as the Sabra, a name was chosen as it was the name of a cactus found only in Israel and used as its national emblem. Sabra was also an affectionate term used to describe a young active Israeli. This was then produced in England as Reliant’s first four-wheeled car, and the Reliant Sabre was chosen as a suitable name by a simple adaptation from the Israeli one. To provide a body for these two cars Reliant acquired the rights to and adapted that of the Ashley 1172. (see "Sabra Story" page on this site)
Information in this article comes from:
Bert Miller, Vic McDonald, Colin Ward, http://www.motorsnippets.com, http://www.peterenn.clara.net, http://www.scimitarweb.com, the Austin Sevens Club Association, Epping Forest District Council Planning Department and the books, “Ford Special Builders Manual”, “British Specialist Cars” by Chris Rees (Windrowe & Green Automotive, 1993) and “Classic Kit Cars – Vol 2” by Chris Rees (Filby Files, 1997).
