Tom Cropp’s created a fine blend of old and new-school
with his pushrod-powered Anglia - and it’s all the better for it.
Mixing new technology and old school looks is nothing we
haven’t seen before. Indeed, it can make a great deal of sense — all the
thrills, spills and looks of an older car, with a modern propulsion unit that
starts at the first flick of the key, every time.
However, Tom Cropp decided to take this route and throw it
out of the window. Instead, he’s gone old-school with his choice of a hot Cross
flow wrapped up in a smooth, high tech-looking body shell bathed in a top-notch
paintjob. It really shouldn’t work and it would have been all too easy to
over-egg the execution, and end up with something undoubtedly odd. However, Tom
has pulled off a balancing act that the trapeze artists from the Moscow State
Circus would be proud of.
Anglia 105E
Malt blend
To find out where this all began we need to step back in
time to Tom’s childhood. “My grandad is Maltese, so during trips to visit him I
used to check out the old Fords, and in particular there was this Anglia at the
bottom of his road,” recalls Tom.
That Anglia made a lasting impression on Tom, as when he was
old enough to consider building a classic Ford of his own, a 105E Anglia was
high on the list.
Old meets new: HPE
Motorsport put together the 1700 Crossflow, but it runs an electric water pump,
too.
Once the decision was made Tom wasted no time in tracking
down a suitable base, however it wasn’t quite as suitable as he first thought.
“I stripped it down and found it to be pretty rotten,” he tells us. “In fact I
spent the next 12 months welding in repair sections and panels just to get the
shell back up to standard.”
What Tom did though was considerably more than just rust
repairs, he removed items such as the badges and trim to give a smoother look.
He then welded up the holes and smoothed off the corners as he went along. The
bonnet arrangement was converted to a conventional rear hinge operation rather
than the standard front hinge set-up. Then there are those arches... “I knew I
wanted bigger arches on the car, but I was unsure which ones to go for. I thought
the Escort bubble arches were a bit too big, and I wasn’t keen on trailer
arches either. So whilst wondering what to use I came up with the idea of
trying an arch off my dad’s BMW 2002ti long-term resto project and it looked
spot-on!”
We have to agree they certainly do, and no-one would guess
in a million years where they had come from. Then it was time to lay on the
paint which still looks box-fresh now, and that certainly is a testament to the
quality of the workmanship involved as the car was actually sprayed four years
ago.
They’re not
trailer arches. Instead, Tom grafted in some BMW 2002 ones to cover those 7
inch Superlites.
Gold ’n’ brown
The colours are a really unusual choice but work well
together in a contemporary way. “I got the car painted in primer, so it was a
blank canvas, explains Tom. “I knew I wanted something pretty wild and in the
end came up with the metallic gold, which is actually a Lamborghini colour,
contrasted by the metallic brown roof and side stripes from the Aston Martin colour
chart.”
These particular paint colours change in differing light and
the gold can become a green colour and the brown can look almost purple! They
certainly combine to give that modern high-tech and high-spec look that Tom was
now aiming for.
