Shellykabuki

On Good Friday of 1972, I took delivery of a brand-new Triumph Spitfire Mk IV in London, England. I had ordered the car while living in the town of Kuching, Sarawak, East Malaysia, where I served in the Peace Corps. After traveling overland through Southeast and South Asia for six months, I landed in London, raced to a bank, withdrew the princely sum of 926 pounds sterling, and headed out to the British Leyland distributorship which had my car. The next 3 months were spent driving through Europe, ending in Rotterdam where the car was loaded aboard a ship which would take it to Baltimore. While waiting for the car to arrive, I visited some friends in New Hampshire whose young son called every new and marvelous thing he encountered "Shellykabuki." Thus was the car named.

Shellykabuki was my car through graduate school, first at Ohio University in Athens and then at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. Shellykabukie proved that most unusual of British sports cars, a good reliable snow vehicle. Well, it was my only vehicle, and I lived out in the country. And they salted the roads. And alas, Shellykabuki developed a nearly terminal case of rust.

Before it got to that terminal stage, however, in 1979 I left for Southeast Asia, putting the car up on blocks for the duration. In my absence, the house burned down, but not the garage. The car miraculously survived, though PVC pipes in the rafters above it drooped like dead snakes, indicating the heat from the fire in the attached house. The car was moved to a barn for several years, where it sat until 1988. I had since moved back to the U.S. and was living in Auburn, Alabama. I flew up to Ithaca in 1988, first calling ahead to friends and asked that they see about getting the car ready to head south. New brake lines and a new battery and tune up, and after 9 years of sitting up Shellykabuki headed south.

But the rust became too great a problem and Shellykabuki was parked under a tree in 2000. I was afraid I'd hit the brakes one day and the frame would stop but the rest of it would keep going. Through the 1990s the body had continued to deteriorate and friends suggested that I consider finding a new body since the engine and transmission were in good shape. My first reaction was not positive, but I came to embrace the idea and set about looking for such a body. After a couple years I found just what I was looking for: Malcolm Branch of Prattville had a 1980 Spitfire 1500 with a seized-up engine and a sound body. So a deal was made to place my engine, transmission, instrumentation, bumpers, and wiring harness into the new shell.

Malcolm came to Auburn and hauled Shellykabuki away one day. We set the two cars side by side and concluded the conversion could be done. Malcolm proceeded to pull everything but the steering wheel and parking brake from the 1500 body and trailered it back to Auburn, where my friends at United Auto Collision took on the project. Well, in truth they didn't rush into the job, but once they got started, they did a great job.