Description
In 1964, Welsh racing driver, Ken Wilson, commissioned Gilbern to build him a GT with a Chevrolet small block, reports say that Ken delivered the engine to Llantwit Fardre in the boot of his road car having purchased it from Doc Murfield.
Ken had other racing cars including a BRM a D Type and an Aston, he raided his stores to supply BRM wheels for the Gilbern and a Jag box. The Gilbern/ Chevrolet was raced and sprinted by Ken and Peter Cottrell in '65 and '66.
Ken later got into the world of racing boats, apparently the Chevrolet engine was borrowed for one, which might have been a good plan had not the boat later sunk taking the engine with it!
The book charting the history of Gilbern "A Dragon's Tale", by Martyn Morgan Jones, includes a couple of pages on Ken Wilson's creation.
After Ken's death, the GT passed into the hands of Ace Motors, in 1976 they advertised it for sale with the somewhat under-stated description "has been modified". The car didn't find a buyer, it was later offered to the Gilbern Owners Club, but a deal was not done. GOC chairman, Brian Gent, kept tabs on the car and later purchased with the intention of restoring it. Brian, distracted by other projects, made some progress and I purchased it from Brian in 2023 and set about a full restoration.
I had the car on track several times last year but was beset by teething troubles, over-heating, brakes and clutch being the main ones. I worked my way through these problems, the car is now in fine-fettle but would benefit from some development time.
I fitted a new race-spec Chevrolet engine, increasing the capacity compared with what it ran in the day, it is mated to an E-Type box and I had new pepper-pot wheels made to copy the BRM style. The axle is from a Healey and DW supplied the LSD. A new cage, Tillett carbon seat, made-to-measure tank and an custom-made alloy rad were fitted. At the same time I was keen to retain as much of the originality as possible, red paint be blended to match original, Ken's trade-mark bonnet stripe, bumpers and dash. During the restoration I found the factory date markings on the underside, I applied lacquer to protect these.
The car has a good history file and I have many pictures taken at stages of the restoration. I'm having to hang up my helmet for medical reasons, I would have loved to have made the Chevy GT a front running car but sadly this is not now possible. I have the V5 and I built the car to be road legal.
As a unique car with genuine period history the Chevy GT does get a great deal of attention, I also have another racing GT but it is the Chevy everyone wants to talk about. There is a feature on this car in the Feb 2026 edition of Classic and Sportscar magazine.
