Tornado Thunderbolt

[Tornado]

Sorry for the delay in replying to others who might have been interested in the Tornado Thunderbolt froma previous post. A reply to one of the questions is why the American replica of the Thunderbolt is showing WAU 637 (reg. plate), same as the uk car. Well the replica is a Triumph(Tornado) Special made by a UK builder who used a standard vanguard chassis and bought a body from Tornado cars in about 1959/60. The car was built up and registered in 1963/64. This car went to the states I presume some time in the sixties and when found it was thought to be a Thunderbolt, but this could not be possible as only one left the factory. Once the owner realised what he had, he built a replica chassis from drawings taken from the uk Thunderbolt chassis. With a factory body and new chassis they now have a modern version of a Thunderbolt. The owners of the car do not say they have the original car, but I believe they asked permission to use the same numbers. This does cause confusion. The car does have it's own identity so maybe they should use this, with the uk plate it was registered with.
The original car was given to my father in 1963 as a perk when the factory closed down. He took the body off, lengthened the chassis and placed the newer Talisman body on top. My father once again has become the owner back in 2002 and has put the car back to factory specification and the car is now 95% complete. I will try and list some images at a later stage. If anybody has any specific questions, I'm more then happy to carry this thread on....T.

[ScionDriver]

That's quite a history for this car. But it is certainly a good looking car! When I first saw Thunderbolt, I thought this might be a thread about Harry Potter's broom!

[Tornado]

The build history is quite interesting and it's history as a club racer in the early sixties is pretty good as well. My father still has some trophies that he won. Thanks to a racing enthusiast we have a list of some 40 odd races that it competed in, with the list growing. My father was proud of winning the 750mc 6 hour relay in 1960 and still has the trophy. It's the 50th anniversary of the Tornado Cars Ltd. this year, so we are hoping to show a few cars at various shows. We have 8 Tornado's from all models and have restored 4 and the 5th will be started soon. But we have no Brooms!!

[henk4]

Interesting, any plans to bring them out for some historic events?

[Tornado]

For now no. It takes alot of effort to complete the restorations as my father and I do it together. He is in his early 80's and still enjoying playing with the cars. May be some day in the future. Though hill climbs is something we have talked about.

[henk4]

Is it possible to give a small resume about the rise and fall of the Tornado factory and the overall number of cars produced? (Is there a wikipedia link?)

[faksta]

Tornado (car company) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia and look the Tornado Register link at the bottom.

[Maxy]

I saw the siren but why didn't it sound?