The 400GT/4 is about to head home. She’s running great now that we found the issue with the points. We even re-charged the A/C system and it’s cooling…for now.

My upholsterer did a great job repairing the seat on the driver’s side seat cushion. During the 70s and 80s, the Connelly leather was really bad, and this car’s seats were not exempt from the bad batch of leather. The original leather was thin, and wore through very easily. I’ve found many 400 seats to be soft and comfortable, but the leather surfaces easily wore away. When the current owner first bought this car, we decided the least expensive solution was to dye the seats to buy us some more time. Two years later, the seats held up pretty well, but the driver’s side cushion was showing some cracks. Since the leather had not split and cracked all the way through, we decided to try filling the cracks with a special leather crack filler and dyed it all to match. If this wasn’t successful, new leather seat(s) may have been the only solution. We manged to dodge another bullet, and saved the owner from a major interior refurbishment for now!

The line of cars waiting to get into our shop doesn’t seem to get any shorter despite my best efforts. Luckily my customers are patient, and I finally flat bedded a 275 NART Spyder to our shop needing some brake work and tuning. This car is a converted 4 cam coupe, so it’s not a real NART Spyder, but still a pretty car. As we were driving back to the shop, someone was seen taking a lot of pictures of the car. I hope he wasn’t disappointed when he posted these pictures on F-chat and found out it was a fake!

I unloaded another car off the transporter last week that came in from California. It’s a car I’ve been chasing for about 8 years, and the deal was finally closed this year! It’s a 365GT 2+2 owned by a friend of mine that lost interest in the car after it was painted. It was partially disassembled for a cheap paint job, and never put back together.

Despite his lost of interest, he certainly wasn’t without a strong opinion what to do with the car by writing “Make me into a 250SWB Replica Please!” Tom was being facetious, but I’m sure glad I managed to get one of my customers to buy the car away from the temptation!

My friend Peter came over to see the car, and the first thing we did was wash off that rear window!

The new owner has a lot of plans for this car, but I will try my best to guide him the right way. The color is not original, and not even a factory color, but not distasteful. It clashes with the red seats, but I think it should keep the current color, be reassembled, mechanically repaired, interior dyed, and have the owner drive the wheels off the car! I feel the current market does not warrant a full ground up restoration on this model, but the purchase price will support an engine rebuild, mechanical sorting, and reassembly. The end product will be a good driver that the owner can enjoy and use without spending a ton of money. If the market goes up in the future, a bare metal respray and restoration can follow. That’s my advice, and we’ll see if the owner takes it!

Save the Date!

The Radcliffe/Tomyang.net Car Show!

May 7th 2016

I’m very excited to do this again, and look forward to see old and new friends at this annual event. Richard Garre and I have hosted this car show to celebrate all types of machinery, focusing on Italian Cars. There’s parking for about 100 cars and we will always try to accommodate late comers, but if you want a guaranteed spot call Richard to preregister!

Radcliffe Motorcars

12340 Owings Mills Boulevard
Reisterstown, Maryland 21136
Phone: 410-517-1681