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Welcome to the Aston Workshop news section. This section will update regularly, enabling you to keep up to date of changes and new information relating to the Aston Workshop and the Aston Martin Marque.
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Colin Brown works at the Aston Workshop and has recently won a series of awards for the restoration he has carried out on his 1961 Mini Austin 7 at the Aston Workshop in his daughter’s memory.
“We obtained the 850cc Mini Austin in Speedwell Blue in July 2005 from my uncle in Norwich as a 21st birthday present for Sarah. She was working with me at the Aston Workshop as an apprentice car spray painter and had always loved helping me with the car at home. The mini was in need of restoration and the idea was for the two of us to spend some time fixing the car up for Sarah to use.
We started the restoration process straight away. Sarah prepared and painted the component parts, suspension, sub-frames and steering, and I tackled the mammoth task of restoring the bodywork.
Sarah wanted to repaint the car in the new paint booths at the Aston Workshop and she said she wanted the mini to be the first car through the booths when the paint and body workshop was completed.
Sadly, Sarah fell ill from encephalitis meningitis B and died before the car was finished. She never got to see the completed car, or the paint booths at the Workshop.
I knew I had to finish the car in her memory and the mini was still the first car through the new paint booths as Sarah had hoped it would be. I nicknamed the car ‘Dolly’ after the pet name I used for Sarah when she was alive – she was always my Dolly.
Dolly was completed in August although she never really saw much light until May this year when my wife Terry and I decided to take her out to the Hurworth and Teesside Yesteryear Motor Club Classic Car show where she won Best Post War Car.
We couldn’t believe the results as there were so many beautiful cars at the show, but we knew Sarah would have wanted us to continue entering Dolly into competitions.
We took her to the North East Mini Club Show at Seaburn where she came second in the Mark 1 Class, as well as becoming a runner up at the National Mini Show as Stanford Hall in Coventry in a combined mark 1 and mark 2 class.
Since then, we’ve decided to keep the Mini Austin in Sarah’s memory. She would have been thrilled to have restored such a beautiful car and we feel like she would have wanted us to keep showing Dolly. We’ve decided to enter her into as many shows as possible in fond memory of our much missed Sarah.”
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;)
