Ben Crosby’s Ford Racing Puma 0376

At the young age of 13 years old Ben was gifted some money and asked his parents if he could invest it in a car. The answer was, of course as long as he invested it wisely, so following on in his Dad’s footsteps he went on the hunt for a Ford Racing Puma, however unfortunately his budget didn’t allow for a concours example!

The Ford Racing Puma is a rare car with curvaceous arches and cutting edge styling combined with fantastic handling characteristics and a revvy 1.7 Yamaha engineered engine. However, with less than 500 made through a conversion process carried out at Tickford and with only in the region of just over 250 left in existence now, finding one isn’t the easiest task. Number 0376 came up for sale following a dialogue through the Owners Club Racing-Puma.co.uk and after a few weeks of negotiation, a deal was done and the car collected from the South coast. On face value the car looked good and allegedly had had some restoration work carried out and Ben’s idea was to tidy the car up a little and possibly sell it on for a small profit. As Ben explains,

“In 2017 the “tidy up” started with the help of Dad, but soon we discovered that the car was much worse than it appeared on face value, the deeper we dug the worse it got. Being one of the last Fords to not be made of the more modern high alloy content steels they are known to rust, unfortunately in the case of this car this rust had extended to inner sills, seat belt reinforcement panels A and B posts and items such as the boot floor that in some instances were literally nonexistent. At this point we had gone too far to turn back! We decided a full restoration was the only way forwards, so with the help of a renowned Puma specialist ‘PumaBuild Limited’, the car was soon stripped and on the jig with many panels being cut off.”

The unavailability of some panels meant enlisting the help of various club members to extract panels from donor standard Pumas that were in better shape than this Racing Puma (a lucky thing that a lot of the panels and underpinnings are shared with the standard 1.7). After several months the bodywork was complete with a fresh coat of paint, so Ben and his Dad set about restoring all the other bit for the car such as subframes and suspension, on this note the car had the very rare RPJ (Richard Parry Jones) shock absorbers that RPJ requested were specifically valved stiffer for the car to suit his driving style.

Since the restoration was completed, the car has exhibited multiple times at the Practical Classics Classic Car and Restoration Show and The Lancaster Insurance Classic Car show, including being on the Pride of Ownership stand. But one of the cars most recent highlights was assisting Ford during lockdown to help film the new online adverts for the all new Puma ST, filmed over three locations and published by Ford on YouTube. As Ben recalls:

“This was really exciting as we were involved with Ford’s team from the early storyboarding stages, through to filming, with the added bonus of 2019 British Drift Champion Ollie Evans driving the car for the filming.”

Owning and restoring this car has really reinforced Ben’s love of cars and taught him the joy of driving a car that has many less driver assists than his daily drive. We’re sure he will own this car for many years to come. As for his investment, with concours cars commanding prices of up to £30,000 he has done well, with it being worth up to six times his original purchase price - but that’s only money that would be realised if he could ever bring himself to sell it!