A long-awaited update on the progress of bringing this Italian GT back to life.

Looking back through my previous posts, I was surprised that the last update on progress with the restoration of my Dad's Iso Grifo was over the year ago. The reason for this is not lack of activity, but rather the body needing a lot more work than he first thought.

The ravages of rust had taken their toll on the car and there were rather more holes than Iso originally intended. Large sections of the floor of the car have had to be replaced, which meant that a lot of new fabrication was required. You can see some of the work in the photo below (apologies for the quality of photos in this blog, the car was not positioned nor lit for easy photography).

The body finally made it into the paint booth in late 2011, with Dad changing his mind several times before finally settling on a colour known as Grigio Ferro. Serious studiers of colour charts may recognise this as a colour offered by Ferrari during the sixties, and is still offered by them today in their 1950s-60s colour range. A comment on the previous blog enquired as to whether or not the car was originally old english white. When the car was acquired it was black - very black - with even some of the chrome having been painted over.  Peeling some of that paint away did indeed reveal traces of old english white, but underneath that there were traces of a metallic burgundy red. There doesn't seem to be any history of the car being red so speculation is that the car was repainted before it left the factory. Anyone who can shed any light on this is very welcome to comment; the chassis number is 038D.

While the body was being worked on, the interior, various pieces of trim, brakes, supension and anything else that need refurbishment has been rebuilt or has had replacement parts acquired. Dad has been surprised how easy it is to acquire parts for the Grifo compared to Ferraris from a similar era at any rate. Assistance from a number of other friendly and enthusiastic Grifo owners has certainly helped in that respect. The car originally arrived on a set of original Borrani wheels which will be refurbished, but in the meantime Dad has acquired a set of Campagnolo alloys usually found on a Lamborghini Miura for the car. 

The completed and painted body is now back in the garage, and work has already started on building up the car. When I took the photos the rear lights were back in place and the front suspension had been refitted. Andy Frost will hopefully come down to assist in refitting the 327 Chevrolet V8 that he rebuilt.

Now that the car is back in the garage it should be be a lot easier to update its progress over the next few months.  As to when the car will be back on the road, an optimist would say late spring, but realistically it's likely to be towards the end of the British summer.

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