Pembleton Motor Company T24

Retains the unsocial quality and singular charm of a vintage sports car, but with added performance, superior dynamics and greater usability. No, you’re not looking astatine immoderate rogue reappraisal from a classical car website. The Pembleton T24 you spot present is arsenic caller to marketplace arsenic immoderate different car connected these pages, the lone quality being that its raison d’être is eschewing, alternatively than celebrating, caller technology.Pembleton was formed successful 1999, initially producing chassis for self-build, vintage-style three-wheelers, of which astir 400 were sold. Since then, Phil Gregory has passed connected the institution to his lad Guy, who has go its precise youthful MD. Pembleton present produces 2 road-ready models: the V-Sport three-wheeler and the T24. Both cars are hand-built successful tiny numbers (10 per twelvemonth for the T24) by a highly skilled squad of 5 successful a tiny colony heavy successful agrarian Worcestershire.If you comprehend vintage cars to beryllium undependable and analyzable to power but inactive fancy capturing an essence of motoring from that era, the T24 is equipped with capable 21st-century componentry to reassure connected the reliability front, portion making driving comparatively straightforward.Key to this is the powertrain: an air-cooled, four-stroke, 853cc duplicate from motorcycle shaper Moto Guzzi, its cylinders configured successful a 90deg vee, sitting earlier the beforehand axle, gloriously bare betwixt the car’s beforehand wheels (a lower-powered 744cc portion is besides available). With a specified 78bhp delivered to said wheels done a four-speed transaxle from Citroën (but with Pembleton’s ain linkage and ratios), the imaginable of giant-killing show looks slim. But the T24 is simply a gaffe of a car, with a adust value of conscionable 361kg, giving it 216bhp per tonne. So portion it’s nary Caterham Seven, it’s nary slouch either.And it’s the T24’s accepted operation – arsenic good arsenic lone needing to comply with little stringent Individual Vehicle Approval physique rules – that keeps its wide successful check. The well-proportioned aluminium body, resembling the lines of a neatly crafted Austin Seven Special successful profile, is hand-formed astir a tubular spaceframe, past bonded and riveted to an aluminium level to marque a airy and rigid semi-monocoque. Fully autarkic suspension, via a pullrod system, with the assembly underslung on the sill country connected each broadside of the car, keeps the T24’s centre of gravity low, portion inboard beforehand brake discs trim unsprung weight. Weight organisation is an awesome 51:49 beforehand to rear, claims Pembleton.Drop into the constrictive cockpit and your close limb falls people extracurricular the bodywork. You beryllium down a elemental four-spoke, leather-rimmed steering instrumentality facing an elegant dash of turned aluminium, inset with a scattering of tiny dials and an extra-deep cubby. So far, truthful vintage. The leather-trimmed two-seat seat (behind which is 155 litres of stowage space) tin beryllium adjusted fore and aft and you beryllium debased wrong the car with your legs much oregon little consecutive successful beforehand of you.Thumb the starter and the V-twin thumps into life. Pedal controls are airy – possibly a small excessively airy – and it takes a fewer miles to acclimatise to the push-pull, aluminium-topped Citroën gearshift sprouting from the dash, with its constrictive gross and dog-leg first.There’s nary hood, truthful the curved scuttle and tiny Perspex surface are your lone extortion against the elements. At 5ft 7in, I had to hunker down to debar being successful the airflow, truthful anyone taller would request goggles.But marque nary mistake: the T24 is an implicit hoot to drive. You ticker the skinny, 18in, spoked beforehand wheels, shod with due vintage cross-ply tyres, moving distant successful beforehand of you, but the thrust is genuinely sublime: supple, controlled and quiet.The engine, which sends old-school vibrations done the assemblage astatine little revs, soon smooths and from 3500rpm pulls enthusiastically up to its 7750rpm redline, accompanied by a vocal but utterly infectious soundtrack. The rack-and-pinion steering is reasonably low-geared, truthful you find yourself moving rather hard done tighter bends erstwhile you’re up to speed. But the benefits of that debased centre of gravity mean choky and precise unvintage assemblage control, with lone beforehand grip limiting your eventual cornering velocity.Starting astatine £39,594, the T24 is hardly inexpensive (that benignant of wealth would easy bargain you a jolly bully pre-war MG TA with alteration to spare), but arsenic an authentic and finely crafted tribute to cars of that era, without their strings attached, it hits the people completely.Simon Hucknall