Fire up the Aston!
Life on Mars star Philip Glenister helps restore more classic cars to their former glory.
He got to drive a Ford Cortina MK1 and an Audi Quattro in Life on Mars and Ashes to Ashes. Now, thanks to Channel 4’s For the Love of Cars, the restoration motoring show that returns this week, petrolhead Philip Glenister has got behind the wheel of a whole showroom’s worth of classic cars.
For those who missed the first series, the show teams Glenister with car restorer Ant Anstead and mixes motoring history and a road trip with the work that Ant and his team do on classic cars in need of some TLC.
This year’s vehicle selection includes everything from a VW Beetle and an Aston Martin to the original Volvo P1800 used in 1960s crime drama, ‘The Saint’. A less glamorous makeover seed the bantering duo taking a Citroen 2CV for a spin on a farm.
“We had to drive this thing across a muddy field with a couple of bails of hay, some chickens and some potatoes,” laugh’s Glenister, 52. “We were trying to show how the 2CV got the French economy moving. It was an affordable car for people who worked the land and relied on it to get their wares to market. So we drove one across a ploughed field and, amazingly, it bloody well made it.”
Each episode features a ‘restoration intervention’ where the duo refit a beaten-up car and take it to auction with surprisingly lucrative results.
“We managed to set three new world-record prices in series two,” says Anstead proudly. “The thing about For the Love of Cars’ is that the restorations are all genuine too. We don’t stage anything. We build the cars under the radar in a locked work ship and then we put them to a public auction with no reserves. We don’t go around shouting about it, we just let the public buy them. They turn up and value our cars with their hard-earned cash.
One of this year’s best examples, Glenister adds, was the 1969 Aston Martin DBS that features in the first programme. “I wanted to restore it to the condition of the original in one of my favourite Bond films, ‘On Her Majesty’s Secret Service’. It started off as a complete wreck but ended up looking utterly beautiful. It left me quite speechless actually.”
Not that he got his hands too dirty on the restorations. He describes his mechanical know-how as ‘about minus 17’ while Anstead describes him as ‘a menace – he breaks stuff for fun.’
There was a tricky moment with the Aston, for example, when Glenister broke the steering wheel. “We were putting it in the garage and Ant told me to put my right hand down,” recalls the actor with a grimace. “So I put my right hand down and the whole wheel came off in my hands. On the plus side, it does make for some marvellous television.”
For the Love of Cars, Sunday, Channel 4 HD, 8pm
He got to drive a Ford Cortina MK1 and an Audi Quattro in Life on Mars and Ashes to Ashes. Now, thanks to Channel 4’s For the Love of Cars, the restoration motoring show that returns this week, petrolhead Philip Glenister has got behind the wheel of a whole showroom’s worth of classic cars.
For those who missed the first series, the show teams Glenister with car restorer Ant Anstead and mixes motoring history and a road trip with the work that Ant and his team do on classic cars in need of some TLC.
This year’s vehicle selection includes everything from a VW Beetle and an Aston Martin to the original Volvo P1800 used in 1960s crime drama, ‘The Saint’. A less glamorous makeover seed the bantering duo taking a Citroen 2CV for a spin on a farm.
“We had to drive this thing across a muddy field with a couple of bails of hay, some chickens and some potatoes,” laugh’s Glenister, 52. “We were trying to show how the 2CV got the French economy moving. It was an affordable car for people who worked the land and relied on it to get their wares to market. So we drove one across a ploughed field and, amazingly, it bloody well made it.”
Each episode features a ‘restoration intervention’ where the duo refit a beaten-up car and take it to auction with surprisingly lucrative results.
“We managed to set three new world-record prices in series two,” says Anstead proudly. “The thing about For the Love of Cars’ is that the restorations are all genuine too. We don’t stage anything. We build the cars under the radar in a locked work ship and then we put them to a public auction with no reserves. We don’t go around shouting about it, we just let the public buy them. They turn up and value our cars with their hard-earned cash.
One of this year’s best examples, Glenister adds, was the 1969 Aston Martin DBS that features in the first programme. “I wanted to restore it to the condition of the original in one of my favourite Bond films, ‘On Her Majesty’s Secret Service’. It started off as a complete wreck but ended up looking utterly beautiful. It left me quite speechless actually.”
Not that he got his hands too dirty on the restorations. He describes his mechanical know-how as ‘about minus 17’ while Anstead describes him as ‘a menace – he breaks stuff for fun.’
There was a tricky moment with the Aston, for example, when Glenister broke the steering wheel. “We were putting it in the garage and Ant told me to put my right hand down,” recalls the actor with a grimace. “So I put my right hand down and the whole wheel came off in my hands. On the plus side, it does make for some marvellous television.”
For the Love of Cars, Sunday, Channel 4 HD, 8pm
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