Martin has been a fan of the JBA for many years and this car is one of two that he has with the other being his project build car. This car was purchased from Te Aroha through TradeMe and was driven back to Wellington by a very pleased Martin.

The JBA Falcon was originally the brain child of three ex British Leyland engineers named Ken Jones, John Barlow and Dave Ashley. It’s a conceptual 1930’s styled two seater sports car. Which means a car developed from a collection of styles from the era that the designers considered looked good. In England where it is still produced it has been a great success story for it’s designers.

During the latter part of the 1980’s, Gary Shaw in Whakatane got interested in the Falcon, started a company called British Component Cars and imported ten kits from England. He built up a number of the cars and sold them as “turn key”, the rest he simply on-sold in kit form. It is possible that this car is this car was used as the demonstrator by Gary. Later Gary made a jig for the chassis and took moulds of all the panels for the car with what appears to be the intention of producing it here in NZ. None were produced however.

The car is built using a combination of fibre glass and aluminium panels, and uses the 2 Litre Mk 3 – 5 Ford Cortina as the donor vehicle for all the mechanicals. Some of the parts used in the car are a little more difficult to identify and therefore remain a mystery.