Kit Collection Day

I placed the order for my GBS Zero kit on the 24th of April 2021 following a very impressive factory tour. At the time, Richard told me that kit deliveries were typically running at around 12 weeks so I was expecting my kit to be ready by late July. I was not really in a hurry and had plenty of donor parts that needed attention so I was happy to be able to start the build in earnest just as the summer was starting.

July rolled round quickly but my kit was nowhere to be seen. In fact I found getting hold of the factory very difficult (be email at least).

What did happen in July was GBS held one of these regular Cars & Coffee events which are a kind of open house at the factory for people to bring their cars, look round other cars and have a good chat over some coffee and snacks.

As this was the first of these events since I ordered my kit, I made sure I went along to take some photos and meet some of my fellow GBS builders.

It was a good event and everyone was very friendly and quick to answer any questions about the cars. But one thing really struck me about the majority of the cars was they all had nice paint jobs that made them look like real cars, not obvious kits.

The standard GBS Zero is supplied with aluminium sides, bonnet and rear shell. Coloured GRP nose and front / rear wings complete the bodywork. None of these are fitted to the car although the Gen 2 kit does have the aluminium panels pre-pressed.

Virtually none of the pictures on the GBS website are of cars in this state but I assumed that this was a marketing ploy and that the bulk of kits were built as in the picture above but the Cars and Coffee morning showed how wrong I was. There were maybe two cars that were unpainted and they looked out of place next to all the fully painted cars.

Originally, I was happy with an unpainted car as the metal body was one of the reasons I choose the GBS Zero and I was trying to contain the costs of the build but as I looked around the carpark fully of colourful cars, I decided there and then that I needed my car to be painted!

Here are a few examples of painted cars that GBS sent me when we started to talk about paint options.

GBS do offer a painting service where the car is delivered fully painted...but the issue is that the body panels need to be fitted before painting and that also means a few other things need to be fitted before the panels (wiring loom, brake lines and fuel lines).

A few people on Facebook mentioned they fitted all these things then returned the car to GBS for painting (or to their chosen paint shop). But GBS do a service where they will fit the wiring loom, brake lines, fuel lines and all the panelling for around £1500 which is a very tempting prospect when you consider the time that will cut from the overall build time.

Of course, it may be that you want to fit the panels yourself as part of the challenge but for me, this seemed like a good option.

A few days later, and I had upgraded my kit order to include panelling and full paint job! The only issue, it was going to add several additional weeks to my kit delivery which was already severely delayed due to the number of orders GBS had in the order book.

So I waited!

Then in mid September I got an email from GBS informing me that my chassis had been panelled and it would be ready to go to the paint shop in a few days...so what colour did I want?

I had spent a lot of time thinking about paint colour in the months since I made the decision to add paint to my kit. I considered orange and British Racing green but kept coming back to a deep red colour. In retrospect, I wonder if it was because the factory demonstrator was also dark red (different shade to I picked but close) but for whatever reason, I settled on a special shade of red known as Mazda Soul Red Crystal.

This is not just a shade but also a special process that has three layers of pearlescent coating to provide a finish that is highly reflective and appears as different shades in different light. It is sort of like the classic candy apple red used on hotrods.

Inevitably, when the car went to the paint shop, the cost for this special paint was more than originally quoted but I didn't want to change my mind at that point so told them to proceed.

A few weeks later, I got some pictures from GBS fresh from the paintshop (and possibly taken on a 1997 resolution digital camera!). Still, I was really happy with my colour choice and proceeded to make arrangements to collect the chassis and other kit parts from the factory.

On October 25th 2021, I picked a Luton hire van and headed off to GBS to collect my kit! It had been roughly six months of waiting which was frustrating at times but GBS are a small company with an in-demand product so I was not too bothered about the delay.

I ordered the optional build trolley with my kit so the chassis came already mounted on the wheeled trolley, no idea how it would have worked without that! The rest of the kit items were spread over a few boxes along with the modified donor parts I had dropped off earlier in the year.

The GBS team were really friendly and helpful with loading the kit into the van and offered some good advice about the first steps I should take once it was in my garage.

Little over an hour after arriving, we were back on the road and heading home.

The next challenge was to get the kit into my garage. There is plenty of room but getting it off the Luton proved a little difficult (even with a tail lift). Luckily my next door neighbour was on hand to provide a little more man-power to help get it down to the floor. Then we simply wheeled it into the garage.

So after six months of planning and waiting, the GBS Zero kit was finally in the garage and the build could start in earnest!