Classic Car Panelling
Panelling is where craft meets art in any classic car restoration, and much of the success of each build can be traced back to the meticulous effort that our bodywork specialists put into each line and contour of your vehicle.
It all starts with a single sheet, but that thin piece of steel or aluminium quickly takes on a life of its own under the careful eye of our craftsmen, wielding everything from the simplest of tools used by generations of craftspeople before them, all the way to the latest in bodywork technology to get the right results. Panelling is just a metal skin stretched over the unique and individual bones of each vehicle, and the true art of this part of the process is the trained eye and experienced hand that can mould each panel to fit the vehicle like a glove using hammers, sandbags and the traditional English Wheel. Not always symmetrical, not always identical, but bespoke and individual as a fingerprint.
You’ve come to us because you know that your car requires more than just the average. It needs a craftsman’s touch to bring it back to life that is as special and unique as your vehicle. You won’t find our bodywork specialists’ wealth of knowledge in a book or online because it has been built up by years of training and meticulous research, and we always go the extra mile to ensure every touch and detail is perfect. Whether that means searching for old schematics, studying period photography, hunting down real world examples or embracing the design philosophies that brought your car to life in the first place, our craftsmen will do whatever it takes. We’ll then re-create the process used to make each body part originally, step by step, so that your car’s paneling is restored as if by the hand of the engineers who first built it.
Our intention is always to craft every inch of paneling with the greatest respect to the original design and with a total commitment to authenticity, but the true measure of any expert is blending the old with the new to add to what came before. With this in mind we add the finest modern precision to the wisdom and judgment of a specialist bodywork expert to create rolled steel and aluminium parts that are accurate to within tenths of a millimeter, and scale models to ensure each piece fits perfectly before we create it. This ensure that nothing is left to chance, and the combination of time-honed crafting skill and up to the minute modern engineering precision comes together to create something that is truly world beating in its quality and style.
At Carrosserie we specialise in the unique, the rare and the beautiful, and those qualities do not come out of a production line, so nor do our hand-crafted panels. Built using age old techniques to complement the work of the original builders of your one of a kind vehicle, each panel combines craft and art to do your own personal masterpiece the justice it deserves.