Stratford business creating custom cars for cool customers

IT’S all in the detail for a Stratford entrepreneur building customised Land Rovers for “cool people”.

Although it’s less than a year since Jake Bailey set up Project 88, he already has a 12- to 18-month waiting list. He focuses mainly on classic Land Rover series II and early Defenders, with some dating back to the 1950s.

Rusty, neglected has-beens are meticulously rebuilt and restored, then delivered to clients all over the world.

Some models are quite rare, making them collectible, but mostly they’re prized for their looks and iconic status.

Jake’s team, who include former JLR mechanics, make sure that as well as looking pristine, the cars are structurally sound and mechanically fine-tuned. Given Landies have a reputation for not always running smoothly, the rebuild usually includes upgrades such as fitting a five- instead of four-speed gearbox to push up top speed, swapping drum for disc brakes and adding power steering. Other popular updates include Bluetooth speakers and phone chargers.

Jake, 24, said: “They’re quite modular vehicles and you can buy a lot of parts and assemble them. It’s more like Lego, as in it’s more of a build than a restoration.”

“We do quite a few things to make them more modern but not so that they lose their soul.

“It’s about building them to a high standard so you can do 70mph without feeling it’s going to shake to pieces, and they’ll be reliable and give you more use out of the car.”

Given that the value of a fully rebuilt classic Land Rover can hit six figures, it’s not surprising many of Jake’s customers are wealthy and work in the City or creative industries such as designers, architects, and marketing.

As well as working on Solihull-based fitness clothing company Gymshark founder Ben Francis’s Series I, the team are also building a car for his colleague, chief brand director Noel Mack. Other clients include Netflix, a director at Next and a couple of famous names we can’t mention.

“We build for some pretty cool people,” Jake pointed out. “It’s very much about the visual element for them and that carries through to paint colours, seats and wheels.

“I’m quite fussy about the aesthetic and the quality of the build, so every nut and bolt will be zinc-plated in the same colour throughout the whole car, and it’s these little nuances that add up.

“Nothing leaves our workshop until it’s perfect.”

Export is a big part of Project 88’s success with a third of the cars shipped to clients in the US, a third to Europe and the rest to London and the UK.

Clients prefer to put their own stamp on a car by selecting paint and fabric colours, trim and accessories and that’s why the workshop team includes trimmers who hand-craft seat covers on site.

“Traditional Land Rover seats tend to be plain and there isn’t an off-the-shelf premium version, so we make our own, which we can trim with leather,” Jake explained.

Restoring and building classic cars in the blood, as Jake’s father Sam Bailey owns Stratford-based SL Shop, one of the world’s biggest independent classic Mercedes Benz specialists. Jake grew up washing cars and making tea, then later used his business management, marketing and digital skills, honed while at Stratford College, to promote the SL Shop brand but always doing “various gigs of my own”.

It was only a question of time before his soft spot for Land Rovers won out. A photo of him on his first day at school shows him standing in front of his father’s Land Rover.

“Dad always had classic cars, before they were crazy expensive like they are now,” he explained. “Whenever he had a Land Rover, that was the car I got most excited about. I always thought a Land Rover would be my first car but it never happened, so when the chance to buy one came up three years ago, I thought, ‘Ooh, maybe I can make a few pennies and tick that box’, and it’s snowballed from there.”

He went full time with Project 88 in February, and since then, it's been “pretty wild”.

Given Land Rover history is rooted in Solihull and JLR are in Warwickshire, Jake says he feels proud to be this county’s only independent building classic Land Rovers at scale.

He adds: “We’ve got some significant competitors in Portugal and the US but we’re doing it in the homeland of Land Rover and all the parts are manufactured within a 30-mile radius of us – for instance, the chassis were made in Coventry. For overseas competitors it’s months of imports and logistics but for us, it’s 15 minutes down the road.”

His location makes it easier to find models to rebuild, via his own contacts in the business and with 21,000 followers on Instagram, he’s often approached by people wanting to sell to him.

Jake said: “We get offered quite a lot of cars and our contacts have built up over time, but it’s easy to buy the wrong one too quickly, so it’s about going for the right cars at the right time, rather than just wading in and taking whatever’s offered. When I do see the right one, I drop everything because I need to have it. I’m quite good at negotiating but if I know the car is a total gem, it’s a case of, ‘I’m coming now, don’t show it to anybody else, I’m loading the trailer on the truck’ and I’m racing off.”

Jake wants to take on more crew – mechanics, painters, detailers and trimmers – at Project 88, named after the 88-inch wheelbase measurement of series II Land Rovers.

He added: “We’re a young company, so energy’s high and we have a laugh. It’s a nice workshop – not a typical back-street garage. People walk in and say: ‘This is cool’, which is important because the aesthetic of the car runs through our workshop and everything we do.”