Will Fiennes

My first car, in 1966, was a 1936 Merlin 9, which suffered the indignity of being rammed in the back by a Hillman Imp.  This was followed by a 1934 9 fitted with an Austin Newbury body, purchased in bits for restoration but not yet completed!  There is also a pair of 1933 12/6 Kestrels, both major projects; one is almost back on the road.

For most of my working life I have run a business restoring pre-war vehicles; a major part of this activity has been the remanufacture of an extensive range of parts specifically for Rolls-Royce and Bentley, plus replacement cylinder blocks for the Riley 6-cylinder engine.  After a number of years in the wilderness, returned to working on my own cars in 2000 to be very impressed with the quality of the Riley engineering.

For a short period in the 1970’s I chaired what was then the Register Spares Committee and prior to that ran a ‘Directory of Services’, disseminating information to Register members about companies offering services that could be of use to them when maintaining or restoring their cars.