GRAHAM Brown’s 1950 Austin A90 Atlantic convertible really was the restoration project to end all restoration projects. First there was the sorry state of it when he bought it from the UK.

‘I did what you should not do and bought it over the phone,’ said Graham. ‘I tried to save the £500 by not going to see it.

‘To be fair the chap did say there was quite a bit of rust on it but that everything was there.’

Charitably, Graham does accept that it was a case of a non-technical amateur trying his best to be honest rather than someone stitching up an absent buyer.

But then he has had a long time to overcome any initial disappointment he felt when it arrived on the back of a truck a whole 17 years ago.

Not, of course, that it took even the painstaking Mr Brown all that time to produce the car that won best in show at last year’s Classic Vehicle Club event. Far from it.

The major stumbling block was the rotten bulkhead.

Although it is anchored to a separate chassis, the body still needs that big bulkhead for structural rigidity.

‘The one bit we could not do was the bulkhead.’

So the daunting Atlantic was ‘chucked at the back of the garage to have a go at some time or other’.

In the meantime he got on with other projects: the two pre-war Austins that he uses for his 1930s wedding car hire business – the 1935 Chalfont with its division and pop-up fifth and sixth forward-facing seats and the virtually identical conventional five-seat Austin York.

Why Austins?

‘They are reliable and parts are generally easy to get.’

And why the 1930s?

‘By then cars had become quite practical to drive. Before then many cars had only two-wheel brakes. By the 1930s they had decent brakes and a fair turn of speed.’

And there was his boat, a 1985 30ft Railcraft Sedan.

Turning that from a neglected hull into ‘a flat on water’ complete with central heating took two-and-a-half years.

But from boat to Atlantic seems a logical progression and at last the bulkhead problem was resolved and it was the turn of the Austin.

‘We found an abandoned restoration project – someone was going to do a convertible out of a saloon – and the bulkhead was perfect.’

The new piece was cut out of the donor and welded in, Graham repaired the doors and Roy Priest made new front wings using the old ones as patterns.

Ford Escort cabrio rams replaced the original items to lift the hood. ‘They often leaked – people used to get covered in oil.’

And now Metro electric motors power the windows up and down while the interior rear view mirror is supplemented by a couple of Mini door items that look surprisingly as if they really  belong there.

‘I don’t like to reverse without them.’

But with no more than 100 or so Atlantics left worldwide, this was one Austin where getting parts was not going to be as easy as emailing a club secretary and waiting for the package.

‘It’s the trickiest restoration I’ve done in the 25 years of doing them.’

Those five Pontiac-inspired stripes that run down the centre line Graham had to make himself then send off for chroming.

‘The chrome alone must have cost me £5,000.

‘I reckon the car cost me £30,000 altogether. I think it might be worth £20K. now, but perhaps I am being optimistic.’

And he had to make a new frame for the hood and also grafted indicator housings into the wings and fitted them with sidelights modified to take orange bulbs creating the indicators to supplement the old semaphore trafficators.

But eventually the car was ready to receive back its seats reupholstered in white leatherette with green piping by James Rintoul of MHV – ‘The only thing I really had done for me’.

The green piping picks up the smart – if non-period – metallic paintwork, a Honda Jazz green chosen by wife Linda.

At least the engine posed few problems. Like the bulkhead it was a donation from another Atlantic and it seems that the guy who described it as low mileage was more accurate than the chap who warned of ‘a bit of rust’.

Just three weeks after the rebuild, the Browns were off to France with it.

‘We did 600 miles without a problem.’

So what’s the next project?

‘Nothing,’ comes the instant reply.

Graham, 69, is still keeping busy with a couple of part-time jobs after selling his body shop business.

‘But after spending four years working five to six hours a day on the Atlantic, I promised the wife there would be no more.’

So, it really was the restoration to end all restorations – and what a cracking swansong.

Follow the progress of the restoration in this gallery…