Steve's Gardner Douglas Build & Events

I've made this, my Gardner Douglas (GD) Cobra build website, to illustrate my progress during my sessions in the garage, and I’m pleased to say the build was a pleasantly challenging and rewarding experience. The WoW factor comes after the research, the sourcing, the measuring, the remeasuring, the drilling and cutting, and doing things that were not within my comfort zone.

The build also caused me, by choice, to revive my dormant woodwork, metalwork and tech-drawing skills, and I had to get to grips with the vagaries of GRP manipulation, compounding and finishing; and this is where a cursory knowledge of meteorology was useful too. 

The straightforward intricacies of the Dremel were something I hadn't realised would be such a useful skill to get to grips with either, and last but not least, the varied and decidedly nebulous world of electrical jiggery-pokery was something that [to me] was a very important topic of understanding. I do like to know and understand what's going on, and the 'why' is important to me. 

And within those themes, I am very pleased that my build went as planned and I [the car] got through the IVA the first time.

Loads of research were enough to focus me to get the build right and done properly, and contrary to popular belief, you don't have to be a whiz-bang mechanic to get the job done... Getting oily is a personal option — or not, as the case might be.