Lucy Busby

I’ve always loved to create art; I didn’t really get on with school so my progression to college to study art was very short lived and within a year of leaving school I was working in retail and living independently. I think it’s fair to say I gave my parents a hard time as a teenager, but it was sitting in the garage with dad watching and ‘helping’ him restore his old Land Rover that made me the petrol head I am.

I’ve run scout groups, I’m a registered Rally Marshal, I love Ford Escorts, Minis and Land Rovers, but had never thought that I could actually work on cars myself, let alone build stuff how I really wanted to. I just didn’t have the confidence, despite my dad working all his life on cars and racing Minis – I was a girl and nobody said “Lucy you can do that”. I worked in retail in outdoor shops, working as a manager and running the mountain bike service department, which is how I knew Ethan, he and Harvey would come in buy outdoor gear.

When Ethan was developing the show, he called me to come down and see the workshop space they had just aquired and tell me his idea, within weeks I was sanding floorboards and using all my creative energy to build the Paddock Speedshop with him. I’m learning on the job, but I’ve always been a quick study and together we’re building cars we all love in the hope that we can inspire more people of our generation to pick up a spanner. We need to preserve and use these classic automotive works of art or an entire industry and set of skills will fade away and die.

None of us are qualified technicians, but we get loads of help from experienced industry veterans, we have been inspired and encouraged by TV personalities like Henry Cole, Ant Partridge and Helen Stanley who have all become friends and mentors to me, especially Helen and I hope I can continue the fight and inspire more girls to follow their dreams – I love what I do and together we are ‘Restoration for a new generation’.