Graham Dewhirst loves tinkering with transport from times past. The retired electrical engineer aims to restore the kind of cars he and his family had decades ago and return them to the roads. Gradually he is fulfilling his ambition.

His fascination with the Italian three-wheeled Isetta, fondly known as the ‘bubble car’, stems from his teenage years. “The Isetta was the first covered transport I had. At the age of 17, my parents bought me it to get me off the Lambretta scooter!” laughs Graham.

“I thought it was wonderful going to work in winter under cover rather than on the scooter.”

Graham kept his quirky runabout for 15 months before swapping it for a compact rear-engined saloon, the Hillman Imp.

“I had that for a while and always said when I was approaching retirement – I retired at 54 – that I’d love to restore the vehicles I had as a kid,” says Graham, from Leeds.

“I thought I would try and source the vehicles similar to ones I had all those years ago and put them back on the road.”

His first restoration was the Imp. Produced by the Rootes Group from the early Fifties to the late Sixties, the Imp is said to have been produced to compete with the Mini.

Graham created a classic car corner in the Stanningley engineering company he and his business partner ran. They sold the company in the mid 1980s, giving Graham time to devote to his restoration obsession. He completed the Hillman in 2004 and began showing it at car shows and rallies.

The Imp is regularly taken out on weekend runs, although Graham says he prefers to use it in dry weather.

Two years after restoring the Imp, the ‘bubble car’ he bought – a similar version to the one his parents bought him in his teens – was ready for the road. “I put two years of effort into it and drove it six miles to the classic car show in Otley, and it won,” says Graham.

After restoring two cars from his youth, Graham began to search for another project. It was his wife’s suggestion to source a Hillman Husky – an estate version of the Imp which her parents had. “My wife said it would be lovely if we could source one like they had all those years ago,” he says.

With the help of a fellow enthusiast, Graham tracked down a Husky in a warehouse in Rotherham. He bought it and so began another labour of love.

He is currently working on the Husky in a friend’s workshop. He plans to paint it up at his paint shop in Calverley in the spring.

Once he’s returned the Husky to the road, Graham will concentrate on the second bubble car he acquired. “It was in appalling condition but I couldn’t bear to scrap it,” he says.

Spending his working life refurbishing redundant electrical equipment gave Graham a passion for repairing things. He finds the internet and car clubs – he’s a member of the Micro Maniacs – useful for sourcing patterns and parts for his cars.

I suspect he won’t run out of projects. He has a Cycle Master, a basic motorised pedal bike from the Fifties, to restore after a friend told him about it.

“It was a glorified pedal bike but the engine was built into the hub of the rear wheel,” says Graham. “It was a clever design 50 years ago. I have seen a few restored, and thought I’d get all the cars done and the house done to keep the wife happy! I may do the Cycle Master as an easy job at home to keep my hand in.”

He says classic cars are individual and interesting to drive compared to their modern motors. “To drive my classic car is tremendous,” he says. “I think there was a huge sea change in cars in 1960.”

Graham recalls cars before then being very basic. “The Mini and Anglia, all the ones I remember, were a new generation of vehicles, and it’s nice to see them back on the road,” he says.