DK Engineering is the foremost Ferrari 275 GTB specialist in the country and has so far restored more than 20 of the cars during the past decade. In its workshops right now is a four-cam GTB that once belonged to English comedian and actor Peter Sellers.
The left-hand-drive car has been with DK since August 2017 and is on schedule to be delivered back to its owner in the summer after a restoration that has taken it back to the configuration in which the actor drove it on the roads around his Swiss home in the late 1960s and early ’70s. That work has included returning it to its original Celeste green and even fitting a radio antenna on the right-quarter panel.
“To do a 275 restoration properly takes two years,” says DK acquisitions consultant Harvey Stanley. “This car was perfectly presentable and no one would have said it looked a bit tatty when you drove it into the golf club, but if you’ve got a car that is a seven or eight out of 10, the restoration process is the same as if the starting point was a one out of 10.
“You still have to strip the car back to the bare bodyshell. That’s what you have to do if you want a car that’s going to be in concours condition.”
There was a debate over the radio aerial, however.
“Sellers would have had to have it fitted and it is actually quite ugly,” says Stanley, “but it is one of the identifying features of the car.”
DK Engineering, Chorleywood, Hertfordshire. Tel: 01923 287687, dkeng.co.uk
