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Thanks for offering to go and check out the 'museum' one day, Mike - most appreciated and I suppose one way to get to the bottom of all the mystery.
Many thanks also for your brother's side of the story regarding Fernando's DAM 4100 / Fiesta Si. I'm not doubting him one little bit, but it just means I have two versions as I was told something completely different by David Appleby on one of my many visits to his workshop in the mid / late 1990s.
It all starts off a few years earlier though, talking about Sam's car(s)...
I had a conversation with Sam at Donington in 1988 and he confirmed that his car was originally Austin Rover chairman Harold Musgrove's demonstrator (toy?), and a Gaydon test car which Sam acquired in April 1987.
It rallied with Reg No B697 CMG and D999 VFW and he only contested three events in the car (listed on previous pages as 1987 Azimghur, Epynt and Mewla) but then following the crash on the latter event it was reshelled into a bodyshell from the ex-works temperature test car over the winter of 1987/1988. Sam apparently acquired the bodyshell from Cyril Bolton in late 1987.
The reshelled car debuted on the 1988 John Price Rallying Longleat Stages with Reg No E264 AAM and Sam continued to use it right up until he hired it to Liam McCarthy in 1992.
The original damaged 1987 Mewla bodyshell was apparently later repaired, and sold to Fernando Capdevilla as a spare in 1991. It was this shell that David Appleby told me that Fernando's DAM 4100 / Fiesta Si was built upon.
Like I said, I'm not doubting your brother's story at all, but just thought I'd tell you what I was told. I would certainly be interested in what you and/or your brother thinks of all of the above?
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