The Odessa history

I did some research online about the famous Odessa van that I featured in my previous post and found out that the Odessa had several lives. This custom CF is in the memory of many British vanners and hot rodders from the 70's and 80's in different forms.

Odessa started out as a white CF owned by Alan Fern. It was running a Vauxhall straight 6 engine.

Below a photo of it at the 1979 Nationals:

 

Truckfest - late 1980's

Then in 1988 it was bought by Tony Isaacs and completely restored at Auto Fantasia. From what I gather it was in terrible shape and had a lot of work done to it. Here is what someone who worked on it back then said: "it was so rotten when we stripped it you could hold the rear door frame and swing the roof from side to side!!! also the sills were made of thinners cans riveted together and skimmed with p40. We put a hell of a lot of metal into it but obiously that was a long time ago now."

Part of the restoration included receiving a Rover V8 engine, auto trans and Jaguar IRC that it has now.

Over the next few years it would receive several different paint jobs:

"The van was on its way to autofantasia for some work when it was involed in a crash, which revieled some serious bad workmanship once at auto the welding started that ended in the botom foot almost all being replaced. the van was painted red and kept the odessa theme."

"...away it went only to return having been vanderlised (they threw bricks at it ) with Tony not so happy. if i remember correct Tony thought it needed a change to shake any bad luck so it became black and called for valour with zulo graphics away it went again."

Some time later it was re-painted blue but this time back to the original nautical theme.

Here's some photos of one of it's last appearances in public:

Last summer it was found rusting away in the grass in a farm in Brinsley.

Today the current owner is selling it. The Odessa has come back from the depths of hell to show condition before but is there anybody out there that is willing to give it a new life or is this the end?