Our Story
Growing up in a village just outside Beaconsfield in Buckinghamshire and going to school there in the seventies, I was always surrounded at drop off and pickup by amazing cars including a Lamborghini Miura, Ferrari Dino, Porsche 911 930 Turbo, Rolls Royce Corniche, Bentley Continental and many more including my Mum's Morris 1000. This is where my passion for classic and sports cars began. Like most of us my first car was a Mini which was hotted up to 1340cc, it was always in bits driving my Dad mad. Either I took it apart and he had to put it back together or simply bits just fell off including one day the door, unfortunately when I was stopped for speeding by the police and the constable opened it. It just missed landing on his foot and he had hold of it by the handle, I sheepishly stepped out and said can I have my door back please, thank God he did see the funny side and he let me off with just a talking to. After sadly suddenly losing my Dad and also being a spoilt little sh1t my Mum bought me a brand new Escort RS Turbo in 1989. After having many jobs and cars, one day I was offered a company car. I decided to take the allowance instead, after waving goodbye to my Porsche 911 I bought my first Ferrari, a 308 GTB Qv and I used it as my daily car for four years.
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After spending many years in I.T the passion took over full time in 2005 and I started selling cars from home and then shortly after that moved to a unit just up the road. After a couple of years we moved to an old car showroom in Ringwood with a small workshop at the back. As things grew we ran out of space so we moved into a 5000 Sq ft unit also in Ringwood, we remained there for four years until we heard that the ultimate original 40's garage was up for sale in Burley in the New Forest. After meeting the owners and discussing what plans I had for the place a deal was done. That was the easy bit the next was to raise the deposit and arrange a commercial mortgage. On February 17th 2017 after over six months Dawson Engineering Ltd it's building and it's contents were ours. A dream come true to be able to add our touch to what was already an amazingly rare jewel. The plan was to keep a lot of things as they were and add the classic and sports car sales and restoration to it. We still serve the fuel and some customers still have petrol accounts. The stores upstairs carry parts some of which go back as far as the early forties. A lot of the existing Automobilia was actually purchased new to serve a purpose not as part of a collection. I love this fact and have just added my collection to it.
Ringwood
Settled in Burley
2017
