I am seeking the current owner of a very, very early Copycat C-Type replica. Long ago and far away, I commissioned the build of the third Copycat C-Type. This was the third Bolton works build by Jim Marland and staff. I sold this car ages ago. The car reappeared several years ago at a well-known vendor of, shall we say, not top condition collectible vehicles. She looked a bit sorry, teeth missing in the grille, etc. And then disappeared again. I am currently clearing out the residue of decades of Jaguar enthusiasm and found packets of photos and slides related to Copycat #3. This includes many slides of the car at the Bolton works with a beaming (and very young) Jim Marland. I would like to pass these materials on to the current owner of the car (I hope that she, the car, still exists!). The car is uniquely identified by her original donor car's registration number: FLV 828C. Even if the car is a replica, I think that she is of historical interest as a very early replica C-Type, and deserves to have her original documentation with her.

For those that may not know, Jim Marland and Copycat were the early pioneers in supplying replica C-Types in the first years of the 1980s. Of course, in succeeding decades the replica business exploded, the replicas became more accurate and much, much more expensive. Copycat moved upmarket in parallel, turning into Proteus Cars, a much larger enterprise, and eventually Jim Marland sold the company onwards. The early Copycats were, shall we say, "evocative" play things, a few miles away from being exact replicas. But they were bags of fun!. A few were fully built at the Bolton works, while many were sold as kits for construction by who knows whom. Mine was a Bolton-build and based on a Mk 2 donor, and after inspecting the car at Bolton, I had her shipped home to the US as baggage on the QE2 (those were the days!). A few days after she arrived, I received a frantic letter from Jim: please look under the seat for a trade number plate. He had driven the car to the Southampton docks, stuck the trade plate under the driver's seat during the in-processing, and forgotten about it. I found the number plate and helped it make its second trans-Atlantic crossing.

I am attaching a few photos as teasers, showing the Copycat years ago in South Carolina. If the current owners of FLV 828C can document themselves as such, I will be happy to forward much more material to them.

 

Just spotted a ~10 year old video on my former Copycat C-Type replica, a walk-around probably made as part of a sales effort. Identified by the tell-tale UK registration number on the nose. Any clues as to where that car might be today?