Auto Talk: Andy Saunders 21 February 2007

Welcome to the world of the UK's most prolific custom car builder, Andy Saunders. Stuart Milne meets the man behind a roofless Allegro – and a spaceship-inspired muscle car.

I'm driving through Poole in a 30 year-old grey and gold Austin Allegro custom car, with no roof and a bootful of bricks to weigh the back down.

"We built it in 72 hours", Andy tells me as we're driving through Poole in Dorset in a bonkers Austin Allegro roadster. "I worked on this for 57 of them".

There's no doubting Andy's enthusiasm for all things custom. "I broke a kitchen stool a couple of months ago. All it needs is a quick weld, but I just can't be bothered, but I'd work every moment I can building cars", he says with a grin.

This passion for building cars – and previous experience on BBC2's Panic Mechanic – made Andy the ideal candidate to front a pilot programme which combines the best of Pimp My Ride and Scrapheap Challenge.

The working title – Juice My Lemon – says all you need to know about the plot.

"The idea is we take a car for about £300 and using parts salvaged from scrapyards, we turn it into something crazy," says Andy.

As we pull up on a slipway near a posh part of Poole Harbour, Andy tells me about his project: "I bought it for £300 and we built it in my garage. Luckily my neighbours are used to the noise; if they've got a problem, they've not told me.

"We started at 11am on Saturday and didn’t finish until Tuesday."

Andy's Allegro might not be to everyone's taste, but Andy assures me the object was to make it unrecognisable from the original car.

The most striking difference to the £300 banger is the lack of roof. Andy and his sidekick Jim Chalmers wanted to give the car a 'speedster' look, with low windows, no roof and some Porsche-style humps behind the front seats.

But cutting off the roof can cause problems, as it means the chassis flexes as the car is driven. Although Andy is more or a talented stylist than an engineer, he found the solution in some heavy bracing which run along the inside of each door.

The result is a car which feels stronger than some modern drop-tops we could mention.

A low tech solution to another problem was solved in an instant.

"We needed to get lower the rear suspension, so we chucked a load of bricks in the back" Andy said – and a quick peek under the remodelled bootlid reveals he's not lying.

Incorporating Fiat Brava tail lights and a centrally-mounted exhaust, the rear, to the casual observer, looks totally unlike its humble origins.

It's similar at the front, which features headlights from a Volkswagen Corrado and a bonnet constructed from bits of a Corsa and Honda Civic.

Even the panel covering the area where the rear seats used to be has been transformed, using a Vauxhall Cavalier bonnet, with two Renault Clio bonnets cut and welded on top to make the humps behind the seats.

Andy's scavenger mentality means he's a regular at the local scrappers. Getting inspiration from cars booked into the MoT test centre he works in, Andy spends his day looking at the shape of full filler caps, door pillars and windscreens to use on his own projects.

As we arrive back at his house, a low-loader has arrived with the shell of an old Volkswagen pickup truck. To say this was just a shell would do a huge disservice to the planets crustacean population.

It turns out Andy has just had this 1952 VW brought all the way from a sleepy town four hours from Brisbane.

"It's not my next project", Andy says. "But I'm going to stretch it and mount it on a modern Volkswagen T4 chassis to create a retro-look car transporter. It'll look like something from the film Metropolis."

I help Andy push the Veedub to the bottom of his garden on a rusty trailer, and we step inside for a cup of coffee.

Not even his awesome automotive creations could have prepared me for his house.

It's the epitome of 1950s cool, with enormous leather sofas lit by arching chrome lamps, round Perspex chairs and one of those crazy TVs mounted in a huge white orb.

"I only have two hobbies", Andy says, "Decorating my house and building my cars. I've not got time for anything else."

And the fruits of Andy's labour which sit in each of the three garages in his back garden confirm this.

He opens the doors, and his crazy Bentley Mulsanne – dubbed Mentley Insanne – sits there alongside a Honda scooter which has been transformed to look like something from Back to the Future II.

The Bentley was the first car of Andy's I'd seen, and thought it was incredible. But has he gives me the guided tour; I'm simply staggered by the amount of work he's put into it.

"There's 96 feet of welding in there" Andy says, pointing to the roof, which has been lowered, the pillars reshaped and a glass roof from a Mercedes SL installed.

But unlike Andy's other cars – including his awesome Stratos 0 he'd just finished when we spoke to him last year, and the 1950s-inspired X-2000 'spaceship car' – the Bentley looks like it left the factory in its current, much cooler state.

But between showing me the finer points of his masterpieces, Andy keeps glancing back at the Volkswagen which has just arrived.

"I love it" he says. "I can't wait to start this".

Somehow, between making TV shows, his day job at the garage and 1950-ising his house, I'm pretty sure we'll be seeing an awesome retro-styled VW car transporter pretty soon.