Many light years ago, when I was the assistant editor of The Vauxhall Motorist, I lived a but short jog from the Luton factory and the magazine’s office. When I wasn’t at my desk, I could be found working contentedly in my front garden.

My house was situated on one of the main routes into Vauxhall and the garden was the subject of much eyeballing by drivers on their merry way to and from their daily toil – it’s a wonder that the Luton council didn’t sign the place as a potential hazard. Even Styling Director Wayne Cherry once paused during a homeward-bound journey to take a look, and my very impressed editor suggested that I should commemorate the occasion with a plaque on the outside of my modest semi!

What was the attraction? Well certainly not the flowerbeds that had long since picked themselves up and walked in disgust. It had to be the steady stream of personal and magazine project cars in the various stages of change over a number of too few glorious years – a period when the magazine threw off its stuffy image and hit a heady 100,00 circulation.

I wasn’t fortunate enough to have my own garage so most of my work was carried out in the open air during breaks in the weather. My neighbours often referred to the front garden as ‘an extension to Vauxhall’s production line’ and generally looked upon my customising in good humour, sometimes inquiring whether it was still the same car on the drive. For my part I tried not to make their lives unbearable by timing the noisy hammering jobs to coincide with the airliners landing and taking off from the nearby airport!

In all I wrote my way through five custom Viva GTs (including the prototype and the press road-test car), one custom Magnum saloon (dealer show car), one 1256 Firenza droop-snoot, one Viva lightweight economy car (droop-snoot, glass fibre panels, belly pan and Blydenstein long-stroke engine) and an unfinished High Performance Firenza prototype replica (pictured here).

There is not room in this feature to describe and illustrate all the projects in detail, but if the editor wants to invite me back for future issues I will be happy to deal with them all one by one. For the moment I want to concentrate on the one that got away

That was how I got my first sighting of the HPF, and the nose-cone on that particular prototype was quite different to the eventual production version. It had a distinctive louvers above the headlights and the aggressive styling reminded me of a shark – a fish which GM stylists have drawn inspiration from on several occasions.

I came across that prototype again in the Style Auto magazine, a mutilated copy of which I still own. In an article about the styling concepts of the HC range all the HPF prototypes are illustrated. Eventually, like most prototypes, they would have been cut up or crushed. Pity.

Sadly in 1975 The Vauxhall Motorist ceased publication and I left Vauxhall Motors to explore new fields. Then years later I came across a flat-front Firenza coupe that was in fairly good condition, and on an impulse bought it. I decided to play around with the body and paid a visit to Bill Blydenstein in Shepreth to purchase a glass fibre bonnet and spoiler.

Because the cone had been made to fit the wider racing wings, I had to undertake a bit of crafty cutting and shutting to make it line up with the standard panels. Again it was all carried out in my front garden, just like old times!

Notice how the standard Firenza/Magnum circular headlights and positions are not affected by the design, presumably to avoid making too many changes to the standard bodyshell. I realise now that I should have tested the headlights at night to discover whether the beams would be affected by the louvers. Although it is hard to imagine that a road-going prototype would not have fully met all Construction and Use Regulations, the stylists would have had more licence with ‘Old Nail’.

Future plans for the car involved changing it completely over to HPF mechanical specification, painting it black like the prototypes and using the correct Revolution wheels – at this early design stage the Avon safety wheel was probably just a sparkle in the eyes of the stylists. I just couldn’t wait to finish the car and park it outside the Styling and Engineering Centre, creating a spot of déjà vu among the inhabitants!

Then other things got in the way of the project and there were no longer those magazine deadlines to spur me on. So one reckless day I sold it and I can’t remember who to.