Viva las R-M

Vauxhall Heritage has unveiled a 1970 Viva GT at the NEC Classic Car Show, fresh from the R-M Automotive Refinish Training Centre at ITAS in Milton Keynes.

R-M’s key account manager, David Bibb, who played an active part in the restoration, was on hand at the unveiling. The Vauxhall Viva GT is a very rare car, particularly in unmodified condition, as many were used for racing and rallying. This particular one was described as a ‘barn find with very few miles’, but it still required a ground up restoration.

The two year restoration was undertaken by Vauxhall’s Andy Boddy, Terry Forder and the Heritage Centre Team and though the body was reasonably sound, it required new front wings and the panels realigned prior to handing over to R-M’s David Bibb, John DiCarlo and Trevor Munns.

The bodyshell was delivered to the R-M Automotive Refinish Training Centre, the etch primed body carefully filled and levelled before John and Trevor primed it with R-M Perfectfiller, in order to level the body to factory spec.

Following careful flatting, the R-M UNO HD was matched to the Vauxhall factory Monza red colour and applied in two full coats to enable final polishing to achieve a classic high gloss finish.

The stripes, unique to the Viva GT are unavailable, so the R-M team, using photographic reference reproduced the original stripes using flexible masking tape and sprayed the stripes using R-M UNO HD, matched to the original factory orange.