Workshop
“The combination of our skills within the workshop earned us the R.A.C. Restoration award for 2024’
'Conserve wherever possible, repair if required, restore if necessary.'
At Julian Parker Ltd we will always seek to preserve the authenticity of a vehicle or object; we delight in the detail that tells you the car is just as it should be and we are the people who know. We use traditional coachbuilding techniques to ensure that your vehicle is presented in its finest form.
Metal
Julian has over 40 years experience restoring and conserving pre-war cars of many marques using traditional metalworking tools and techniques. His skills are almost without parallel and have led to his work having been selected three times for the Royal Academy’s summer exhibition, as well as receiving invitations to lecture on vehicle conservation at East Dean College. Julian has the very rare expertise required to create almost any form, by hand, from metal. All panel work is gas-welded and the English Wheel is used to shape whatever form is required. Julian’s workshop team offer exemplary complementary skills in ash-framing and traditional paint finishes, as well as mechanical engineering, trimming, & wiring.
Wood
Julian Parker Ltd is one of the last remaining workshops with our own dedicated in-house wood specialist capable of exemplary ash-frame and wood veneer work. He has a deep knowledge and understanding of the properties of different timbers and the perfect joints required for each function and can help clients to preserve the integrity of their vehicle by splicing-in appropriate wood whilst retaining as much as is possible of the original frame work. The fact that our in-house metal and wood specialists can liaise at any point throughout a project, creates the perfect environment for the best possible outcomes.
Paint
Julian Parker Ltd has an award-winning paint specialist with an unsurpassed attention to detail working in a dedicated spray booth. We offer many years of experience in the correct cellulose paint finishes and polishing, including traditional brush paint techniques, as well as signwriting and can include the manufacture of traditional number plates, the hand painting of numbers to bodywork and professional pinstriping.
We support, and refer to, Historic England’s way of thinking about the values that make a building 'significant' and we translate these values to the way that we consider the motorcars that we work with at Julian Parker Ltd.
In advising any client about the best options for their vehicle, we will always consider:
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Evidential value: how the vehicle reveals evidence about past human activity
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Historical value: the stories that these vehicles can tell - connecting people and their lives, past, present and future
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Aesthetic value: sensory and intellectual stimulation that a vehicle or object can evoke.
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Communal value: all that a car, bicycle or object of automobilia means to those for whom it features strongly in experience and memory.
