![Production of the Gilbern T11 never materialised Classic & Sports Car – One-off Gilbern T11: back to life](/sites/default/files/styles/article/public/2023-04/Classic%20%26%20Sports%20Car%20%E2%80%93%20Gilbern%20T11%20%E2%80%93%2001.png?itok=GbwaY2rN)
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.
![Morris 1800 tail-lights on the unique Gilbern T11 classic car Classic & Sports Car – One-off Gilbern T11: back to life](/sites/default/files/2023-04/Classic%20%26%20Sports%20Car%20%E2%80%93%20Gilbern%20T11%20%E2%80%93%2003.png)
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 Gilbern T11 as found in Dorset Classic & Sports Car – One-off Gilbern T11: back to life](/sites/default/files/2023-04/Classic%20%26%20Sports%20Car%20%E2%80%93%20Gilbern%20T11%20%E2%80%93%2011.png)
The incomplete Gilbern T11 was stored outside