Joe Gowland

Ginetta G32(and it's NOT a kit car!)

About the make and model:

Ginetta Cars Ltd. was founded by the four Walklett brothers in the late 1950's. The family produced a range of sports and performance road cars, and a series of racing cars until the firm was sold to Martin Phaff in the early '90's, just in time for the Black Wednesday economic crash. From that point on, times were hard, and almost the last Walklett-inspired car, the G32, proved a very costly vehicle to produce, with little chance of sales in a competitive and dwindling market.

The car itself was probably conceived along with the G25 concept in the early 1980s, and Ginetta (with traditionally strong ties with the Ford Motor Company) were on-line with Ford's R&D facility during the design of the G32 - something that would be unexceptional today, but in the pre-Internet days of the 1980's this was a revolutionary way of doing business for a small constructor. It probably helped that Ford didn't have their own small sports car at the time, and actually viewed the G32 as a means to partly fill that slot in  the market.

The G32 was a fully Type-approved car, undergoing the full gamut of MIRA tests of the day (an expensive process, even for a major manufacturer), but passed them all. Not your average small manufacturer offering then!

The original sales plan had been that the Ginetta customer would by a kit from Ginetta Cars, (it was still advantageous financially to buy kits in those days), have the car assembled by the customer's local Ford RS dealership and then  collect their new Ginetta, complete with a Ford Five Year New Car Warranty. This plan was all ready for implementation when Toyota's ubiquitous MR-2 hit the streets (an obvious competitor, and considerably cheaper), and Ford pulled out of the deal (partly because the G32's performance was barely better than that of the Fiesta XR-2 - but equally because Ford didn't get the promised engine for the G32 into production early enough for the car to have its Zetec!) and Ginetta were left to build the cars themselves - a relatively costly exercise they had not really planned on. In an effort to boost the G32's performance, the Ford Escort RS1600 Turbo powerplant was tried, but problems with overheating saw the alternative of a 1.9l CVH, produced for the factory be Specialised Engines in the Midlands, as the 'performance' alternative. I've driven both models, and the bigger engine has more 'go', but not by much!

It's quite probable that the complications of this enforced change in business strategy were among the catalysts behind  the Walklett brothers' sale of Ginetta Cars, in any case, the new owner quickly realised just how expensive the G32 was to make, and completed the cars that had been started, and ceased production, which totalled less than 120 - including less than twenty convertibles. Some of the cars were exported by the factory to Europe, and the very last of the production run (by now with the long-promised Zetec engines) were exported to the Far East (two were rediscovered in an importer's plot in Singapore, unsold, excise duty unpaid, and recovered by an Australian member of the GOC living there at the time. One has been restored, but the other can't be imported into the owner's native Australia, because the paperwork doesn't tie up - as a new car it would have to pass emissions and other tests it couldn't hope to manage, so that's one less by now!

Full factory specifications are below:

About my car:

I'd been a Ginetta owner previously, with two G15 (Imp-powered) cars for over a decade from the mid-70's and went over to the Ginetta factory in Scunthorpe in the early '90's to have a look at the new car. I even had a demonstration ride in the test hack (and thought it was quite good) but decided the price was too high for me at the time.

Years later, when looking for something to replace my regulation 'tin box', I was directed to my car, on sale in Avon. Purchased and retrieved, the car had had a busy life with its one previous owner, but was in basically good condition, the chassis of the vast majority of G32's is galvanised, the body is grp so the tin worm doesn't have a lot to get busy with.

I've owned the car since the mid '90's and used it as my only car until 2004, when it had a bump at 5mph in someone else's accident. I repaired it myself (we know what insurers want to do, but I didn't let that happen) and it's undergoing a series of developments as time (and my ability) allows.

Although the engine was a mid-mounted 1.6l CVH, with Bosch K-Jetronic mechanical fuel injection, I've since upgraded to the engine the car always ought to have had, the 1.8l Ford Zetec (as used in Ford's XR-2i RS 1800), and, although currently running on Ford's standard EEC-IV engine management, I do intend to have a programmable ecu to give full control of both ignition and fuel mapping - at least once I can persuade my laptop to talk to the ecu!

Further

Ginetta Cars are still in business, and very successfully too - just watch the ITV4 coverage of the British Touring Cars and you'll see G40's and G50's in the support races - and they're a lot cheaper than the Porsches that also support the TOCA package!

If you're interested in more information about the full range of Ginettas that were produced, right up to the present day, why not have a look at my own Ginetta Timeline pages - I hope you'll enjoy what you find.