What is it?

In the 1980's many of the UK's kitcars were based on the ubiquitous Ford Cortina. It was simple, reliable and with Ford's use of subframe assemblies easy to use for a kitcar. There is plenty of history online relating to the Eagle RV, a Jeep CJ7 lookalike, but very briefly it was originally bought by Eagle as a VW beetle based kitcar and later revised to use the Ford Cortina as it's main donor. With requests for a 4x4 version Eagle decided to release a Land/Range Rover version and one based on the chasis and mechanical parts of a Daihatsu, however it is the humble Ford Cortina that is responsible for giving life to most of the RV's produced.

The manufacture of this popular car was passed to Pilgrim for some time and a recent comeback at the hands of Jordan Developments using the Ford Sierra as a donor brings this attractive vehicle into the 21st Century.

My history with the RV goes back to the mid 1980's when I was looking for a suitable kit to build and looked at all sorts of options. I was tempted by the RV then but really wanted a sportscar so went for the Ginetta G31 detailed elsewhere on this site. Some years later, I saw an advert online for an RV in need of renovation and found that it was only a few miles from me, so I went to have a look. Fatal! I didn't need another project! I had (have) loads to do at work, I have a house that needs maintenance and decorating, I already had a GTM Rossa that was undergoing a retrim and new dashboard, not to mention a family consisting of a (very tolerant) wife and two children, which has since increased to three.

Did I need another project?

This particular car was in very poor shape, so naturally I went ahead and bought it!!! After some haggling obviously. Money changed hands and I trailered it home the next day. I parked it on my drive and the kids used it as a climbing frame whilst I finished the GTM rewire and new interior. Several months later whilst talking to a guy at my local MOT station (during the GTM MOT) he asked what I was doing with the jeep on my drive? I told him I was planing to rebuild it though if he was interested I could be persuaded to sell it (I had already seen others that seemed to offer more potential and that came with the right sized wheels etc). A deal was struck and I sold it for pretty much what I paid for it, having spent some time and not much money changing the engine!

A few months later I was getting grief from my daughter for not replacing the RV as promised and another project came to my attention. This one had a hard top, big wheels, decent tyres, a replacement engine (not running) and the present owner had done quite a bit towards getting it back on the road including adding a new 'Eagle' factory wiring loom. I could have just finished off the (rough) interior and put it through an MOT, but wheres the fun in that?