A Passion for Perfection

Mark Nugent is a man on a mission. Not to save the planet, but to preserve and replicate the traditional skills of specialist coachbuilding and restoration of vintage and classic cars. While today the skills of the coachbuilder are all but redundant in modern, mass-produced vehicles, there is a growing international demand for skilled partisans that can replicate or restore many rare and historically significant vehicles held in museums and by private collectors.

Perhaps to the uninitiated we would call them panel beaters, but to do so is to greatly under-value the skills that Mark and other craftsmen operating in small specialist coachbuilding houses in Europe, the UK and Australia display. The origins of custom coachbuilding can be traced to Hungry in 1450 when the first carriage was reportedly built. The 'carriage trade' was a profitable business with custom coaches built for the aristocracy, and today little has changed with the demand for quality coachbuilders high among well heeled private collectors. It is very much a chicken and egg scenario, with coachbuilding prices high, due in part to the very few skilled practitioners - a number, which continues to decline - and a lack of a new generation of coachbuilders to carry on century old traditions.

Mark Nugent runs his business from a workshop in Dubbo and is a passionate young man who has carved a reputation on the world stage. He is devoted to the art of handcrafting aluminium panels and bodies and specialises in vintage and classic car restorations and replicas. He is one of a very rare breed that is determined to carry on old world skills of coachbuilding and has done much to further his knowledge of techniques by visiting and working in a number of famous coachbuilding shops across the UK and Europe.

His journey commenced when he secured an apprenticeship with Concours Sports Car Restoration in Sydney in the '90s where he worked with traditional European coachbuilders, gaining enormous experience working on some rare classic cars. Upon completion of his apprenticeship he knew that to further hone his skills he needed to go to the spiritual home of coachbuilding - England. After writing to several renowned coachbuilding companies he secured a position with Crailville coachbuilders at Southall, London. He worked in London for 3 years spending time with several coachbuilders and enjoyed working with skilled tradesmen that employed age-old coachbuilding techniques on some exciting projects. He recalls making bodies for Rolls Royce, Bentley, Bugatti and Delahaye models. Nugent Coachbuilders was now generating work to the extent that they outgrew their small premises and moved to a new 240-square metre building at No. 1 Hawthorn Street, Dubbo.

Some of the cars that have been built over the past few years include a 1965 Alloy Strada Bizzarrini, Mercedes-Benz 640k with Tiger hunting body and the Zagate 406 Bristol. In his workshop at the moment is a near completed 1952 W194 Gull Wing replica, with another one about to be commenced. Another interesting project is a 1940 BMW 328 roadster that will be built to replicate a BMW built in the 1930s. This is an extremely rare model and being restored for an American client.

Coachbuilding is an age-old skill that involves many painstaking hours of labour, crafting and styling bodies and panels to exacting standards. Bodywork restoration may involve making new panels, but master coachbuilders pride themselves on saving original panel work, history and patina of the car.

The core elements of this work are steel body fabrication and welding, mechanics and paint refinishing. For most specialist shops and certainly in the case of Nugent Coachbuilders the majority of their work is from a blank sheet. According to Mark, "the process of a restoration is ten times easier than creating something from scratch. If someone came to me with an absolute 'basket case' that needed a new body it is simpler for me to copy all the components. Most people come to me with nothing."
The challenges of such a project are obvious. The coachbuilders aim is to build a replica or undertake a restoration where originality is paramount. Often there will be no original plans, drawings or even another car of its like available that can be used as a template for the replica. One of the challenges at Nugent Coachbuilding is that everything is a one off. They don't do much repetitive work. "I make a body, and I may never make the same body again," Mark explained. "The next body is the same thing."

Replicating any vintage vehicle requires graphing the size of a vehicle and the shape of the body, and creating a detailed set of working drawings. It is essential that all of the car's shapes and proportions are right. Photos can aid this, providing rough proportions gained by measuring from the centre of the wheel hub. Some shops have been known to use original photos to construct a buck made of urethane foam, which is then covered with a layer of fiberglass to add strength.

If there is another car in existence in Australia, Mark will usually go and measure it to ensure accuracy. He is just finishing building a replica of a 1952 Mercedes-Benz W194 Gull Wing commissioned by "Sleeping Beauties" in Brisbane. For this replica he was able to access some of the original drawings as well as going to Germany for additional information. It has been a big job because of the complexities of the Gull Wing doors and hinges. They have to be right and to the client's satisfaction. The difficulties with the superbly engineered Gull Wing doors is that there are no straight lines, and the MB W194 doors had to be created using photographs only. Accentuating the design issue, when the doors close down they have to miss the A pillar by being located at an exact angle. Just one door is made up from over 30 pieces, welded, filed and smoothed to look the same as when originally crafted. The complex nature and compound curves of these exotic shapes required Nugent to spend many hours building a detailed timber frame, known as a 'buck' or 'wooden former' to exacting dimensions.

Creating timber frames is an exacting job in itself and Nugent, like most other coachbuilders has a number of skilled tradesmen that he can call on. The only way to make a timber frame for a vintage car is on the chassis with motor installed and on four wheels. That way you can accurately graph the size and shape of the body. On early 1920 and 1930s vintage cars a timber frame is built from English ash and skinned in alloy or steel sheet metal. The timber frame being the actual structure of the body. Nugent works with a skilled cabinet maker when creating any timber frame. Many of us may think that like servicing your car, you drop it off and pick it up when the job is completed. Not so with coachbuilding. According to Mark, "the biggest key is the client. They are the ones that make the decisions. "I am constantly in touch, and they make the decisions that progress the job." Most owners of these cars are pretty clued up with what they want. They don't give it to you to do "free" range what you like. Clients are very specific and particular with what they want and I let them make all the decisions," he said.

When building a vehicle that is new, the majority of the work is by hand. While they employ modern tools such as metal lathes and grinders, pipe benders and power rollers, there are a number of age-old panel making tools that coachbuilders still use.

One of the coachbuilder's traditional tools is the English wheel. It is a device perfected by the English and effectively used for decades. Mark explained it as, "looking like a big horse shoe on a stand, being about 6-7 feet high - just a big cast iron 'thing' with two wheels." You basically squash the aluminium between the two wheels. The bottom wheels are interchangeable with many different shapes to create different panel work, whether it be wings or bonnets or boots and it basically stretches your aluminium."

It is typically a manually operated metal-working machine that allows a craftsman to form smooth, compound curves from flat sheets of metal such as aluminium or mild steel. The process of using the English wheel is known as wheeling. The machine is shaped like a large letter C, with wheels located at the ends of the 'C'. The upper wheel is called the rolling wheel, and the bottom is called the anvil wheel. The 'C' stands vertically mounted on a heavy stand and the throat size determines the largest size of metal that the operator can place in the machine.

The machine works by applying pressure between the wheels through the material causing it to become thinner and to be shaped. The English wheel is so named as it was developed in England and its use perfected by the greatest panel beaters of the day. When used properly this device produces a consistently smooth surface, which requires little or no additional work. Another machine unique to the industry is the Eckold multiformer, which in many regards is a modern version of the English wheel, being able to perform three metal forming functions. These machines may look simple and cumbersome, but the operator needs patience to make many passes over an area on the sheet in order to form the area correctly. This may require making several passes with different wheels and in different directions in order to achieve the desired shape. Depending on the size of the shop, they may also have large and small rollers, edge shrinking and stretching tools.

Needless to say great care is needed in order to ensure an accurate pattern is achieved to exact measurements. Many of us will associate panel beaters with using a hammer over a jig to 'beat' a specific shape. Despite this crude description it is close to the truth, with planishing another traditional skill that is carried out by hand. It involves finely shaping and smoothing sheet metal by hammering it against a shaped surface called a planishing stake. Panel beaters use planishing to finish shaping and smoothing an object after roughly forming it with other techniques, such as sinking and raising. For large jobs there is also an air powered planishing hammer, which strikes hundreds of blows per seconds. There are other metalworking processes such as forming, cutting and joining processes which coachbuilders are also skilled.

In 2007 Mark Nugent was awarded a Churchill Fellowship, "to study the techniques used by traditional coachbuilding firms in the UK and Italy to design and fabricate the bodywork on vintage and classic cars." In May 2008 he traveled to the UK where for 6 weeks he worked at three coachbuilding firms - Shapecraft, Bodylines and Vintage Cars in Lymington, the latter he credits as producing some of the finest work he has ever seen. He acknowledges this part of his tour as "expanding my technical and hand skills as well as gaining valuable knowledge of workings of larger workshops." Shapecraft is world renowned for producing and restoring hand crafted aluminium bodywork for original and replica classic and collector cars, such as Ferrari, Aston Marton, Maserati and Jaguar. One of the highlights of his time at Shapecraft was building a new front nose for an Aston Martin DB4 GT Zagato replica. He visited a number of important museum and restoration departments, as well as visiting such renowned coachbuilding enterprises as Bertone, Dino Cognolato and Ferrari.

Mark can see himself working at some of these coachbuilders in the future, but at the moment he has his roots firmly planted in Australia, with clients from all over the world happy to beat a path to his door at Dubbo. It is perhaps on a slightly depressing note that he acknowledges that traditional coachbuilding is a dying art. There are few people left doing it, with many workshops closing as their skilled personnel simply reach old age.

It is interesting to note that 57 coachbuilders displayed their wares at the 1929 London show. By 1959, that number had dropped to 13. Several years later the number had again halved. Today there are a number of famous shops dotted around the world, but most are relatively small with aging craftsmen.

Mark is passionate about preserving coachbuilding skills and acknowledges that a strong apprenticeship program is one answer to passing on the skills required, but it is an uphill battle. Coachbuilding is a demanding profession, but extremely rewarding, when you view the end product. To entice young tradesmen to work in an area where you are rewarded only by your patience and ultimately skill, is not easy. Here in Australia we are fortunate to have one of the best practitioners in Mark Nugent plying his trade, one of a small band of skilled craftsmen doing fabulous work in the automotive industry.

Brian Tanner