1960 Ford 105E Anglia: Reader Resto

By: Steve Nally with Alan Yule, Photography by: Steve Nally & Alan Yule

Date: 22.08.2016

Dagenham's little unsung hero gets its moment in the sun

1960 Ford 105E Anglia

Some cars have amazing histories. This 1960 Ford Anglia had been in one family for three generations before Alan Yule bought it in 2009. Original owner, Mr R F Ashman Esq, bought the car new for 649 pounds, 14 shillings and sixpence in England in 1960 and ordered the Deluxe model.

On top of options like a windscreen washer, heater/demister, roof rack, bumper overriders, underseal, and red and white parking lights, the Deluxe Anglia also got two-tone paint, chrome trim, a full-width grille – the standard car has a small insert grille – and a better interior with a glove box and parcel shelf.

The Ashmans emigrated to Australia in 1963 bringing ‘Primrose’ with them. They arrived in Sydney and drove the car to Melbourne. It would eventually become their second car and the next two generations of Ashmans would learn to drive in the Anglia.

Retired mechanical engineer Yule’s first car was also a small British Ford, a 1969 Ford Escort, and he’d always had a yen for the boxy Anglia. "My brother was in the Ford club and I joined it and four years later I saw this car," Yule recalls. "The son of the first owner had died and we were actually pricing it for the club to purchase but I decided to buy it."

Yule’s brother thought he was crazy but the little sedan that Yule describes as "a fairly honest little car with lots of dints, scrapes and a little bit of rust" had won him over and he paid $1300 for it. After taking Primrose on a couple of club runs, Yule got stuck into the restoration after promising the owner’s widow not to hot rod it or strip it for parts.

"I had done some panel beating on my first car 40 years ago and sprayed it using a low-pressure spray unit but that was my panel beating experience," Yule confesses. He was about to get a lot more experience. Over 10 months he knocked dints out, rubbed them back, and under-coated them.

"The car resembled a giraffe: yellow with grey spots everywhere," he laughs. "But It was my car and I wanted to do the work" Then he got serious and set himself a target to finish off the car: a national rally to Castlemaine in March 2011. Working "amateurishly properly" he stripped all the chrome and glass, removed the doors and boot, and gutted the interior but left the engine compartment.

"I was pretty proud that I knocked out most of the dints and creases," Yule says. "When I started to put it back together but I found the driver’s side rear quarter was stretched and I had to beat it back into shape. It’s still got a few little ripples but we’ll get rid of them eventually. I only used a 500gm tin of putty for the whole car and a little bit of fibreglass putty on rust holes then finishing putty over the top. I had to do cut-outs on both front guards and weld in patch pieces. I’d never done that before. Welding on the side of a car is a lot different to welding flat on a bench but it came up okay.

"The formulas for the original colours – Cirrus White and Sunburst Yellow – don’t exist any more so a paint shop colour-matched from the petrol cap; they’re pretty close. The dash is the original colour and the paint in the engine bay is lighter but it’s had 56 years of heat. It was the first time I’d painted a whole car. It’s not really hard if you take your time."

Yule also repainted the wheels (rims on British cars back then were painted an aluminium colour, Aussie cars’ were body-coloured) and replaced the worn out buckets with a pair from a wrecked Eunos (Mazda), re-engineering their sub-frames so they bolted straight in. Another problem was more dismaying than insurmountable.

"I wanted to buy new rubber parts in Australia but not all of them were available. Well-known manufacturers were charging the earth for them so I ended up ordering two bundles of rubber and seals from England. They got here in a week and cost $130 less than if I’d bought them here. The galling thing was both windscreen surrounds were made in Australia and exported to England!"

Yule made his restoration target date with a few days to spare. "The rally started on March 16. On March 10 I cut and polished it and started to refit the chrome and badges and on the 15th I drove it to Castlemaine. It took me five months," he smiles. The next project?

"Take the engine out, dismantle it and take it to a head bloke to get news valves and seats. I’ll do the bottom end. I might get a Cortina GT cam ground for it and a set of extractors and a sports inlet manifold, which were available in the day. They will give it another five horsepower!" Primrose won’t know what hit it.

THE RESTORATION

PANELS:

The right-rear quarter-panel had dents and creases that many a backyard panel-beater would have found prettty daunting.

DOORS:

Doors are always vulnerable to minor damage – the Anglia’s pair were no exception. Nice to see Alan’s minimal use of bog in putting them right.

RUST:

Attack of the tinworm. No surprise to see rust on the trailing edges of the little Ford’s front guards. Both sides needed a welded patch after the rust was cut out.

FRONT:

While the front panels were basically straight a lot of minor blemishes needed sorting before the undercoat was finally applied.

REAR QUARTER-PANEL:

With the big dents removed the shape of the rear quarter-panel was restored. Dealing withremaining ripples required quite a bit more detail work.

COLOUR:

It was light-at-the-end-of-the-tunnel time when Alan started spraying the colour coat. But there was still loads to do in time for the rally.

SPECIFICATIONS:

1960 Ford 105E Anglia

ENGINE Four-cylinder Kent 997cc OHV
TRANSMISSION Floor-shift four-speed manual
LENGTH 3912mm
WIDTH 1422mm
HEIGHT 1422mm
WHEELBASE 2229mm
KERB WEIGHT 737kg

Unique Cars magazine Value Guides

Sell your car for free right here