One-off Gilbern T11: back to life

By James Elliott

| 6 Apr 2023

Classic & Sports Car – One-off Gilbern T11: back to life

People often talk about cars having a difficult gestation, how delays between concept and production relegated them from ahead of the game to well behind it before they even hit the showrooms.

The thing is, people are usually talking about an 18-month or two-year hold-up. Kids’ stuff; here’s a car that took a mere 40 years to come to fruition yet still looks space-age on modern roads.

The unlikely builder was Gilbern, the Welsh company committed to Ford power and glassfibre shells that, if you squint a lot, might be mistaken for an Alfa.

The T11 was a stillborn Gilbern that could have challenged Marcos and TVR

That something so sleek, low and, well, pointy might come out of Pontypridd is hard to believe. Perhaps that’s why it didn’t.

The credit for building this car must go to one man just as much as it does Gilbern. He is Gordon Johnston, a Kent born-and-bred mechanic with a penchant for Volkswagens and hot rods.

You may have spotted this car in our Lost & found section in July 2007, and that was about when the trouble really began.

If you thought it had a testing time in the Gilbern days, its more recent history is a catalogue of Kafka-esque woe.

The incomplete Gilbern T11 was stored outside

But let’s start at the beginning, with the origins of Gilbern.

Spawned from a one-off glassfibre special that was cooked up by butcher Giles Smith and German ex-PoW Bernard Friese, it was founded in 1959.

The title came from combining parts of their Christian names, and the firm had its first GT based around Austin A35 mechanicals and a Coventry Climax engine ready for road test by May 1960.

Never a ‘kit’ car per se (all of the components were supplied), about one a month was built in the early years and the moniker changed to GT1800 following the adoption of B-series power.

Gordon Johnston found the car in Dorset after reading about it in the Gilbern Owners’ Club magazine

The Gilbern proved popular and production was soon up to one car a week.

The introduction of the Genie in 1966 propelled the firm into upmarket GT territory thanks to a Ford V6 engine, but Smith and Friese were struggling financially.

Roger Collings’ ACE group – which made its money in the one-armed-bandit boom – came to the rescue in 1968.

The subsequent cash injection boosted staff levels, but Gilbern continued to make losses even after the launch of the Invader.

The death knell was sounded when the tax break for component cars was withdrawn and the Welsh concern found itself competing on price with the likes of Jaguar.

In 1972, Collings sold the company for £1 to the MD he had installed, Michael Leather, but the receivers were called in a year later.

‘The Gilbern is difficult to drive, but it is rapid and utterly thrilling’

Gilbern spluttered to a halt in 1974 and was properly dead by 1980, having built around 1000 cars.

Long before then, however – and like most small manufacturers living hand to mouth – Gilbern had flirted with the radical, a car that would put it on the map and change its fortunes.

The proposed T11 couldn’t have been more different from its standard fare.

It was a bass-low two-seater powered by a transversely mounted Austin Maxi engine – the all-alloy BL ‘six’ that Gilbern had wanted having failed to materialise in the UK market – and was destined for display at Geneva in 1971.

The superb Gilbern Owners’ Club records show that one prototype was built and tested at Castle Combe, but the project stalled and the T11 forever remained a curious ‘what might have been’.

Well, thanks to Johnston’s efforts, not quite for ever.

$The Gilbern T11 sits on a set of Wolfrace alloy wheels$

The Wolfrace alloys are wrapped in Pirelli P600s

Having bought the body, chassis and a few other bits such as the narrow, custom-made seats in 2000, Johnston set about finishing the car and making it roadworthy.

“I had an Invader and it had come with a pile of old Owners’ Club magazines,” he explains. “I was leafing through them, saw the T11 and instantly knew I had to have it.

“It was just a pile of bits under a tarpaulin down in Dorset with someone who had owned it for around 12 years, so I offered him £1000.”

The project wasn’t without its challenges, but in 2009 the Gilbern T11, complete with its Downton-tuned 1500cc engine, hit the road in time for the huge national meeting to mark 50 years since the foundation of the marque.

The joy was short-lived, however: “In May 2011, I went to overtake a lorry,” Johnston explains, “but it pulled out and crushed the car against the barrier; it didn’t even stop.

“At first the damage didn’t look too bad, but the driveshafts had been pushed in and destroyed the gearbox.”

The Gilbern T11’s interior was a blank canvas; Johnston used Smith dials to match the Genie/Invader

You’d think that might not be a problem, but early cable-change Maxi units are extremely rare, so much so that those with spares don’t dare part with them.

When all attempts to source a new unit failed, Johnston was left with a stark choice and opted to keep the car on the road by installing a 1998cc engine and five-speed ’box out of a Toyota MR2.

“I picked the MR2 simply because of availability, reliability and because the orientation is correct.”

The T11 now boasts a healthy 200bhp against its 875kg weight and revs to 7500rpm. It makes you thankful that Johnston’s piecemeal construction didn’t cut corners on the oily bits.

His T11 has fully rose-jointed wishbone suspension, Triumph GT6 discs all round (with Gordini Turbo calipers) plus plenty more mod cons.

And all shrouded in a breathtaking body. The design is credited to the prolific Trevor Fiore, and while that rear shape is unmistakably from the same hand that drew that Monteverdi Hai and Alpine A310, today Fiore distances himself from it.

The Gilbern’s Toyota MR2 engine thrives on revs and offers impressive performance

There are pictures of Fiore and loyal sidekick Jimmy English working on a clay, but the designer is keen to highlight the differences between that and the finished car.

Fiore never visited the factory and eventually fell out dramatically with Roger Collings: “I don’t remember if I contacted them and asked if they wanted me to improve the looks of their cars because I didn’t like them at the time.

“We were living in Alicante and were persuaded to move to South Wales to find that there simply weren’t the resources we were promised.

“As a result it was really bodged up and never went any further than that picture of Jimmy and I working on the model.

“It all went wrong because, like most self-made men, Roger had a way that things had to be done. He thought he was saving money, but it ended up costing far more.”

As for the car, he says: “There is a resemblance, but it’s not my design.”

Jimmy English working on the original clay model

“Someone at Gilbern has obviously made a decent fist of finishing it off after I, shall we say, ‘exited’ the project and handed over the model, but I wouldn’t consider this car as a Fiore,” he continues.

“The roofline is far too flat and the concave aspect of the bonnet isn’t something we would have done. The wheelbase has clearly been lengthened as well and the rear line lowered so it throws it off-balance.

“We would also have put the rear lights [Morris 1800 Mk1 items] above that crease to reduce the blank space.

“One of the nicest details was meant to be the side scoops, which form part of a structural rollbar. They were to abut the windows and be stainless steel, but that hasn’t happened.

“We did also plan a louvred rear window like the Lamborghini Miura, but it was to be full-width and not framed as it is.”

Or rather, as it isn’t any more. A louvred Perspex rear screen was in place, but was initially destroyed in the 2011 crash.

The revvy Toyota twin-cam lets you make the most of the Gilbern T11’s balance

Johnston painstakingly replicated it, but then it shattered again over speed humps near Crystal Palace.

His temporary solution is a plywood item with a strange but necessary scoop at the top: “The problem is, the radiator is hemmed in at the back of the car and, despite the side scoops, doesn’t get any airflow at all, so this feeds it nicely.”

Inside, there is definitely a home-built feel to the T11, but that is because it was entirely Johnston’s invention, there being no drawings or parts to work with.

The flock-covered plywood dashboard was built from scratch and is stocked with Smith dials à la Genie/Invader.

Once you have negotiated your way in, snug doesn’t begin to describe it; even a person of 5ft 7in (at a push) will find themselves scraping the headlining.

The floor-mounted seats are supportive, though, and it is easy to feel relatively comfortable, the small sports wheel and shallow dash adding to the cockpit space.

Naturally, after the fuel pump has whirred away for a few seconds, the engine note is all Toyota and not at all Maxi, but coming to terms with that is the least of your issues because few cars demand more focus.

Gilbern’s financial troubles brought the company to an end in 1980

Riding on 185/60 R14 Pirelli P600s and period-perfect Wolfrace wheels, the ride is hard and you feel every bump, while the twitchy steering can be unnerving on country lanes.

The 40:60 weight distribution means that concentration is vital, not least due to a sticky, unresponsive throttle pedal.

Oh, and the pedals are hugely offset to the left with the clutch pretty much behind the centre console, and the steering is overly heavy at manoeuvring speeds.

Plus that panel means near-zero rear visibility (not that the driver is ever afforded the luxury of glimpsing in the mirror), while the non-opening windows (due to the curvature) mean that the insufficient eyeball vents can’t keep the Gilbern at any heat that won’t cause severe weight loss.

There is no question that the Gilbern T11, as it stands, is a difficult car to drive – even its owner agrees – but at the same time it is utterly thrilling and extremely rapid.

As you punch through the gears and revel in the twin-cam’s revvy progress, you can’t help wishing you were on a flat track so you could really exploit its potential and balance.

This unique Gilbern had a difficult gestation, both times around

That Johnston is likely to cover more than 3000 miles in the T11 this year is testament to his determination and indefatigability. But then, having seen what’s he’s been through to bring this prototype to life, we knew that already.

There’s a phrase that modern-car journalists use as a veiled insult: ‘It will be marvellous when it’s finished.’

You could apply that to the T11, but as a statement of fact rather than an affront. As long as he has the car, Johnston – who has already sunk £30,000 into the project – admits it will never be finished and a further lifetime of fettling and improvement lies ahead.

After the trauma of the past decade you can understand what he means.

So many times he got this project to ‘sign-off’ and then went back to square one, but also it is because he will never quite be satisfied: “The problem with finishing off something that no one else did, is that it is open-ended.

“If you are restoring a car to original, there are very clear boundaries of what it should be, but this just goes on. And on.

“I’ve got 100,000 hours logged so far – including 80,000 to do it the first time around – and it’s still going on. God knows if it will ever be finished.”

There must be a few regrets then? “Oh no, not one. Something that never existed needed to be made.

“I’m not sure that the T11 would have been Gilbern’s salvation, but it certainly would have challenged the likes of Marcos and TVR and, if it had been developed properly, who knows? I’ll tell you when it’s done!”

Images: Malcolm Griffiths

This was first in our December 2013 magazine; all information was correct at the date of original publication

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