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This page shows a collection of photos contributed by George Zdanko,
from Redditch near Birmingham in the UK.
George owns a nice collection of classic cars,
several of which are awaiting restoration,
and this collection will certainly keep him busy until the end of his days.
Jensen cars are a very special part of his collection,
with several exceptional and rare models of that marque.
Among others he has the Convertible Jensen Interceptor
that was given to Kjell Hammond Qvale,
who owned Jensen Cars in the first half of the Seventies,
for use during his visit to the UK in 1974.
The green Jaguar Mark IX was the start of the collection in 1973. This car still is his "trusty steed".
The first limo is 1M1544 built in May 1970.
It was resprayed in black over maroon, and refitted with a brand new interior.
The work was done by craftsmen in Poland, George's country of origin.
In the story text on the right, submitted by George for publication in The Driving Member magazine of April 1996, he describes how this car ended up in his collection, almost by accident.
You would hardly say that this is the same car that,
a few years ago, was shown in
this magazine article
in its previous terracotta colour.
When the first limo was ready, work started on his second one, shown below. This is car 1M1581, still with its original registration BYK330H. It was, although slightly younger, built in the same month as the other one. This car was originally the Mayoral car for the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham for ten years. A few documents from its earliest days have survived (click to enlarge):
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George tells the story: the car then moved onto the carriage trade, where it spent several years. Then it joined Howard Godsland, then the DS420 registrar of the DLOC, who bought it some years later. It should have been scrapped, as donor bits & pieces came-off this BYK330H car, to "donor" other DS420s in a firm specialising in the carriage trade.
The front suspension was already off the car, it seems, rear suspension too, as well as the engine. Fortunately, Howard Godsland bought the car as seen and restored it; he had welded the wings, partially the sills, fitted a later 4.2 litre engine and front suspension, with ventilated discs and upgraded brake callipers. It served him well in his own carriage business, but the interior, West of England cloth, became rather tatty.
The car would have had most certainly another appointment with the scrap-man, as the next owner, Doug Miller, (he bought the car some six years earlier from Howard Godsland) was emigrating to Canada and literally on the morning of his departure, I came and bought the car. It set me back just a few hundred pounds, I recall, and Doug Miller was very much the gentleman and handed over a large collection of spares, which he sourced from Howard Godsland, and which in monetary terms, would have cost me more than the car itself. Fortunately, I turned-up with a car transporter, just in case, so took delivery there and then, much to the consternation of my wife - how's that for impulse buying?
The DS420 was in a sad state, water and condensation having formed in the car, with puddles much in evidence - mildew, rotting carpets and much else besides. It could not be started, some problems with the choke, apparently.
The condition of the bodywork was a dull, matt black finish, and as the car was parked under some large coniferous trees, the sap from the trees fell onto the car and manifested itself on the bodywork in the form of resinous mass, which quite frankly I had one hell of a job to shift. It was everywhere!! Besides, the usual ravages of the car being kept in the open, unused and unloved for several years, i.e. deep-etched corrosion, was also much in evidence. Doug Miller said openly that had I not intervened, the car would have inevitably been scrapped.
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I used the car in its dull matt-black state for some two years and then
decided to have it restored in Poland, where labour rates are that much
cheaper. This included interior woodwork veneer, carpets and new leather
(original of which was much destroyed by the amount of moisture during Doug
Millers latter ownership). The car now exudes elegance, charm and ambience
aplenty, much more so than many of the two-tone painted cars, in my opinion,
in its Dark Blue over Carlton Grey livery. The interior is fully leathered.
It also has Air Conditioning fitted to it.
The series of photos shown here is from the restoration of car BYK300H, in the Polish workshop in Nowa Sol. Individual pictures can be clicked to enlarge, and many of the enlargements have caption texts to explain more detail.
This series gives a very typical insight in the amount of restoration needed for almost all cars of that age after a number of years of neglect.
Certainly, I was most vigilant about the way I wanted the interior &
fittings to look, so much so that the "car's revenge" was in fact the time
it took to fit all these things.
The upholsterer was one thing, a separate issue, but he was not let
loose with door fittings, etc., this time round.
I had an excellent fitter on the case and concentrating as he was on lights,
fittings, instruments, door-locks (which were very worn) & handles,
heater & heater-fans (out they came to be reconditioned, re-fitted,
would-not-work so out again for strip-down, only for the electrical windings
to break-down, electrical motor re-wound, assembled and re-fitted again....
for the switch to break-down at that very moment... just after the heater fan
came out again... phew...!!! - you get the message...),
interior woodwork re-veneered & re-lacquered, etc... etc...
he booked some 580 man hours on the job! Oh, he was instrumental in fitting
part of the air-conditioning in, too. All these are really intricate things
and if they are to look and function correctly, they take forever on a
DS420. I don't begrudge it with the chap in question, he really is good.
Certainly the upholsterer learnt a few things from the first car, but the job is really first-class. Incidentally, this upholsterer was also working on a Bentley interior at the same time, a Polish registered car, so you can see the extent to which the Polish people go to with old collectors cars. It would have been unheard of some 10-20 years ago, newish Merc's & BMW's would have been the prime order of the day.
The next series of pictures was taken in the snow in the
Zielona Gora area in Poland, one month after the previous series.
As you can imagine, the date "2007 2 8" as printed on the photos
is not the 2nd of August.
With these pictures George wrote: "The "winter wonderland" is an unusual feature of late in the west of Poland, due to, it is said, global warming. However, the snow did come down for a day or two, so at least the big Daimler sampled this breath-taking winter scene.
One of the photos even made it to the front cover of The Driving Member
magazine of December 2007.
This photo shows car VKM209H back on the road in June 2023
after a mechanical refurbishment that took several years.
Most of the work was done by George's son Stefan.
The following two photos of car BYK330H were published in The Driving Member magazine of November 2016 (Vol 53 No. 6) and Augustus 2017 (Vol 54 No 3). George was a very regular contributor to the magazine, but usually he did so in his role as the "correspondent" for the Majestic Major range. Outings to the DS420 model did happen though.
Finally, the last photo shows a proud owner with that limo at the "50 years of DS420"
event, organized by Bill Eltringham at Newby Hall in 2018.
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Still Daimlering at the end of the day.....
Photos contributed from 2006 / 2007 until recent (2023)