Concours restoration · Berwick, East Sussex
Artists of Automotive Restoration
Not a slogan. It is engraved on the plaque we fix to every car before it leaves.
Bare metal to finished paint · One workshop
Volvo P1800
Candy Red
A year in the workshop and 1,300 hours of labour, to five changes the owner specified himself. It left on a transporter with a plaque fixed to the chassis, carrying its number: 26282 and a file of over 2,000 photographs.
It is the most completely documented car we have finished. All of it — the owner’s specification, the log, the underside, the paint — is on a page of its own.
A year in the building. Thirteen hundred hours in the hands.
Bentley S3
Continental
A Continental gives you the longest unbroken panels we ever paint, and near-black gives you nowhere to put a mistake. There is a chrome waistrail that runs the whole length of the car, and either it is straight along every inch of the door and the wing or it is not.
Look at the shut line as the light crosses it. The gap is even top to bottom, and the reflection carries across it without stepping. All of that is settled in bare metal, long before there is any colour to look at.
A second S3 is on the jig now.
Twelve feet of panel, and nowhere to hide.
Aston Martin DB6
The pink one
Crashed at La Carrera Panamericana in 2022. We repaired the body, including a new door fabricated in house, then finished the car in pink at the owner’s request — to stand out at the next race.
It went on to make the front page of The Argus, and a radio interview besides.
Repaired to race again. Finished to be seen.
Jaguar E-Type
941 PVO
Not one of ours. The owner did the mechanicals and metalwork himself and sent us the bodyshell for panel finishing and paint — then wrote nine pages about it for the E-Type Owners Club Magazine.
He came to us because of a different car first: his own concours-winning Aston Martin V8, which we painted the year before.
He trusted us with the Aston. Then the E-type.
What the people
who own them say
“I had interviewed many body shops for the painting of my concours-winning Aston Martin. The only person I would trust with the E-type was the man who had laid down that paint with such astonishingly beautiful results.”
“…Panel alignment, gaps and paint finish absolutely amazing. Precise closing of doors, boot and bonnet on the money. After visiting other high end body shops I chose DPM Autobody, why because one visit to David’s shop was all I needed to be convinced.…”
“…Every panel was aligned meticulously, body lines flowed flawlessly, and their paint work which was over 2,000 hours was immaculate and pristine. The DPM team treated every detail with expert care, communicating clearly, listening attentively and approaching the car like it was their own.…”
“…I was impressed with the amazing quality of his work and his almost obsessive attention to detail. Exactly the qualities you want in someone doing your restoration!”
“…The attention Ruby gets and the praise, even from seasoned restoration people who have nothing but high praise for the quality of workmanship, is a testament to DPM’s knowledge, fabrication skills and attention to detail.…”
- 92%Class win outright, AMOC Sandringham Concours, 2024 — his Aston Martin V8. We painted that car too, which is why he came back to us for the E-type.
- 450 hrsPanel gapping, levelling and final paint on the E-type above, bare shell to Opalescent Silver Blue, three months in our own booth.
One of the best-known restoration houses in the country sends its cars here to be painted. We do other people’s paintwork, under other people’s names, on cars you have very probably already seen. It is the part of this business our name is not on.
We show at the NEC Classic Motor Show, where a car is judged by the people standing in front of it.