It's all in the mind

The truth? Gostwyck is an entirely fictional car company that I created just for fun. The factory? My driveway and back yard. But the cars are real. Well, one of them is now and one is on the way.

A lockdown project gone rogue

The story starts in lockdown 2020, during the COVID pandemic. I'm a car nerd, both personally and professionally. Bored at home, I was watching a lot of YouTube content and my kids were watching over my shoulder, getting quite into it. One particular video, a tour of the Petersen Museum vault, really inspired them.

"Dad, can we have one of those?" they asked, pointing at a gorgeous roadster from the 50s or 60s. "No," I said. "We don't have half a million quid to spare. But maybe we can build one…"

Kits and conversions

I started looking around at kit conversion bodies. Retro fibreglass skins for modern cars. I say "started". I've been a reader of Complete Kit Car magazine (now Complete Car Builder) for many years and long hankered after building a kit car. A conversion seemed like the simplest route for someone with no garage and only a small driveway to work on.

At the same time, I was working on a number of projects on the future of cars for some of the major manufacturers. I figured if I was really going to understand EVs, it might be a good idea to build one. I'd stumbled across the videos of Damien Maguire on YouTube and the OpenInverter community, and convinced myself I could probably tackle building an EV.

And so this project was born: why not build an EV from modern components and put it in a gorgeous shell from the 1960s, but with all the modern safety features of the 90s or early 00s?

Base car choices

Initially we thought about using an MX-5 as the basis for the project, but these had all the wrong characteristics: the bodies rot but the mechanicals last forever. I wanted a car with a strong body but a blown engine. This isn't what I ended up with, but I convinced myself at the time that a BMW Z3 would be a better option.

We found an MOT failure Z3 down on the south coast of England for just £800 and had it trailered up to Manchester. It had failed on emissions but we very quickly found out that if it hadn't, it was very soon going to fail on rot. Cue lots of remedial welding before we could start on the conversion proper. It only took me five minutes to fix the emissions issue, which was just an air leak. I hadn't welded in over a decade and even then I was hardly experienced. I found a free welder in a skip and pressed it into service.

Mechanical monster

With the body shored up we turned our attention to the mechanicals. Out came the motor, exhaust and fuel tank, and in went a true Frankenstein's monster melange of components: batteries from a BMW hybrid, motor and charger from a Mitsubishi Outlander, inverter from a Toyota Prius. Plus a brake booster pump from an Audi and a power steering pump from a Vauxhall Zafira.

We had the car, now christened the Gostwyck Spyder, on the road and MOT'd in 15 months, but it took another three years of tinkering and upgrades before we finally had the body on, modified and painted. The body is a Z300S kit from Tribute Automotive, but it has been quite extensively modified.

And it's still an ongoing project. It needs more power, uprated suspension, interior mods and much more. So of course, I'm starting on a second project instead: the Gostwyck GT.

The Gostwyck GT

Offered an absolutely mint Z3 but in an unpopular specification (1.9 auto) at a sensible price, I jumped at the chance in 2023 when I briefly had a garage and thought I would be able to store and work on both cars there. A tricky landlord meant that idea was shortlived and all the tools and storage I had acquired for the garage, along with the new car and all the spare parts, went into storage.

With the Spyder approaching at least partial completion, I decided it was time to get the GT project going again, even if it was on my driveway in rainy Manchester, rather than the nice dry garage (yes, I'm still bitter).

The Spyder is very much a summer car, and I figured a hardtop would make sense for the winter. The same company that makes the Z300S kit also does the very attractive GT. So, I've set my sights on that. Plus a rather more powerful motor, larger battery pack, and fast charging for longer range trips. Work begins winter 2025, life-permitting.

Why Gostwyck?

If you're not bored already, you might be asking the obvious question: where does the Gostwyck name come from? Well, that's a funny story.

A few hundred years ago, my ancestors married into one of Britain's most disreputable baronies, the Gostwycks. While some of the early Gostwycks were powerful people, elevated to nobility for their service, some of the latter holders of the title were less than scrupulous, spending so much money buying elections that they bankrupted the family.

I've always liked the Gostwyck name and I could totally imagine a small British sportscar company from the past being called "Gostwyck". So I figured I'd create one, even if it does only exist in my head.