Classic Car Ash Frames
The story of the ash frame is very much like the story of classic cars and the people who love them.
Once the standard, admired by drivers for its light weight and immense strength and loved by engineers for its versatility, many manufacturers moved on to cheaper wood. Those who continued to use ash even when wood was replaced by steel did so because they cared more about the quality, craftsmanship and longevity of their creations than profit margins. So it is today at Carrosserie: We restore classic cars because we love precision, skill and age old tradition. We use ash frames because nothing embodies those things more.
Whether your vehicle is having its ash frame repaired or entirely re-built from scratch, each project that enters our workshop uses seasoned, straight grain ash shaped and worked with traditional methods to create a unique and bespoke design that is as unique as a fingerprint for your vehicle. Many classic cars were built by hand, without plans or blueprints, by craftsmen just like us using the traditional tools and techniques available to them and passed down through the generations. We firmly believe that true quality takes time, so we approach each project exactly as they did, falling back not on tricks or corner cutting but on skilled hands and experienced eyes that can put exceptional carpentry skills into practice.
Creating or repairing an ash frame for a car is just another area where art meets craft in a restoration project, and carrying out work of the highest quality as we do requires a firm grasp of both: We work tirelessly to do your special vehicle justice, studying existing models, plans and designs to truly understand how your vehicle fits together. We recreate every element down to the tiniest and most challenging details, matching wood grain and types of joints like for like where possible, to ensure that nothing is left to chance. We also use the latest tools in combination with some of the oldest, such as the traditional English Wheel, to create exceptional examples of even tricky carpentry like double curves just as the original designers would have done.
A successful car restoration project is a living, breathing thing that comes together to make something greater than the sum of its parts, and it’s our job to bring every specialism required together in one team to create your masterpiece from start to finish. Our carpenters work hand in hand with all the other disciplines under our roof to ensure everything works in harmony, allowing exquisite paneling and high quality bodywork to be seamlessly integrated with your ash frame, for the highest quality finish and top performance. Piece by piece and layer by layer, your vehicle is a complex symphony, but at its core is a hand built ash frame that holds it all together. It’s our mission to make that frame as soundly and traditionally as possible, so you know your car is built on the best possible foundation.