2024 - A new beginning
After an initial soft launch of the new website a few months ago, I think we can officially say we up and running. The idea of resurrecting the Ruddspeed brand has been talked about between Steve and myself for the past 10 or 15 years.
As mentioned in the intro text, Steve Gray from Brooklands Cars Ltd knew Ken for many year due to his ownership and work restoring his racing AC Ace - RPO 826 and had many stories of Ken. With Ken’s blessing, Steve took on the now forgotten Ruddspeed brand with every intention of doing something with it…but work and life got in the way and it sat on hold for many years.
I (Peter) met Steve through my advertising a Volvo Amazon project that I originally had bought from Tony Barrett (the old Volvo guy) about 4 month before, it had a Ruddspeed B18 engine and dash fitted from another Amazon (that had been parted out). I knew very little about Ruddspeed and was only selling the car as I had too many projects at the time.
Steve had bought the project for a client that wanted to race the car, but the car was too big a project for his client. I stayed in contact with Steve, and about 12 month later I bought the car back with every intention of restoring it. I had it transported to Brian Gue at Amazonia, but sadly under the shiny paint work the car was past saving. But we did save that engine and dash. I ended up putting the engine into a red LHD Amazon that bought from Brian, I owned that car for a few years before selling it to someone in France (it is listed under the Replica drop down menu).
In about 2007 when I moved to Switzerland for work, Steve and I talked about resurrecting the brand, so I created a simple website with a few of the images and text I could find and it was easy to update. Then in 2012 Steve had the website rebuilt and updated, we created the first blog on anything we found or were sent, all this was posted on the blog. Unfortunately the company responsible for updating the website had folded in 2018, so we in turn lost access to the site and the blog. We then used Facebook for updates, the website stood dormant until mid 2023 when I started working on an update/refresh.
For now it’s main purpose has been to keep a record of all the cars that passed through the Rudds workshops. We have complied a Ruddspeed Registry and would love to hear of any more cars that were given the Ruddspeed treatment. Going forward we have some ideas and plans on replicating some of the Ruddspeed items, we have two original Ruddspeed Volvo Amazon’s that will be restored to their former glory, a possible new Ruddspeed AC Ace continuation project and the story of our newly created Ruddspeed Volvo Amazon that has been entered in the 2024 Peking to Paris event.
