A Llanidloes man has brought a lifetime of car restoration expertise under one roof with his business specialising in the painting and restoration of classic cars.

Sam Hewitt opened Heterodox LTD in November 2018, and has spent the last few years restoring all kinds of classic cars.

Mr Hewitt has worked around cars since he was a teenager.

Rather than finishing school, he began working at a Porsche restoration garage.

Since then he’s worked in various bodywork and restoration services, as well as doing an apprenticeship at W R Davies garage in Newtown. In that time he’s worked on all things from ‘high end Bentleys to run down Ford Fiestas.’

When Mr Hewitt started Heterodox LTD, he was looking for ‘something new.’ He found that new challenge in old classic cars. In the last five years he’s worked on MGs, Mercedes, Morris Minors, and a range of Jaguars such as the Mark II, Mark X, and his personal favourite, the Jaguar E-Type.

Although Heterodox LTD specialises in the restoration of classic cars, they also work on new cars. Mr Hewitt said: “We don’t just work with classic cars, we’ll work on anything. I just love the work, it’s always enjoyable.”

Although it is possible to just put a new coat of paint on a car, Mr Hewitt explained that doing it right takes a lot of preparation. Mr Hewitt said: “There’s about 200 hours of prep work, and only a few hours of painting.

“Without that preparation, the paint job can fade and cause the bodywork to rust. Also, if you skip the process you won’t be able to remove any imperfections that were originally on the car, such as scratches or bumps in the bodywork.

“Generally it’s a case of putting on a coat of etch and epoxy paint, which seals any gaps in the metalwork. Then we’d take out the dents and other imperfections, before moving on to the filler work. After that we do a high build paint, which is a thicker, resin based coat of paint before flatting it and wiping it down.

“What we need to do changes with each car we work with. It depends on its heritage."

An example of the variation of Mr Hewitt’s projects was visible in the bodywork of a Mercedes SL190, which were produced between 1955 and 1963. The classic car will be reworked so that it runs electrically rather than by a fuel engine and will then be restored and painted.

Heterodox LTD can be found online by their website: www.heterodoxrestorations.co.uk, as well as their social media pages on Facebook: Heterodox LTD classic car restoration services, and Instagram: Heterodox_ltd.