Original JBA Falcon Sports was lower, smaller and sportier-looking

JBA Motors arrived on the scene several years ago with their new take on the Falcon theme, with BMW donors and a beautifully built demonstrator that impressed me greatly when I drove it for a feature in TKC Mag in 2012.

Since then they’ve kept things low-key, mainly due to Bill Willcock being busy with his recycling machine business, although a steady flow of Falcon kits has kept the moulds ticking over.

In case you are unaware the original JBA Engineering operation was based in Lancashire and run by a wonderful pair of characters called, Dave Ashley and Ken Jones (an original partner and the Falcon’s creator was John Barlow).

Between 1982 and 2004 the company sold around 1700 Falcon kits (plus 50-odd Capri-based Javelins, too) although once the Dave and Ken sold the operation it sadly didn’t last for long. Bill’s operation was un-connected but he decided that it was a great car that still had loads of potential and set about resurrecting his take on the Falcon Plus 2, albeit upgraded and revised.

Other Falcon variants included, Roadster, SR, Tourer, TSR and the Sports, which is the version that Bill Willcock is now working on. It sat lower, looked sportier and was generally smaller than the Plus 2 and featured what Dave Ashley told me was the Central Body Unit (CBU), basically a GRP bodytub, which made it the most rigid of all Falcons.

The smaller dimensions meant that anyone over about 5ft 9ins struggled with leg and elbow room, although Bill is addressing this by lowering the floors and elongating the footwells, which means people up to 6ft 4ins will now fit.

If JBA Motors’ new ‘Sports’ model is half as good as this, their original Plus 2 Falcon demo car, it’ll be superb.

It may well be cheaper too due to the fact that although it features a GRP tub, there’s more aluminium panelling on the Sports and that means generally less glassfibre mouldings are required. When I once asked Dave roughly how many Sports were produced between 1988-2004 he gave me what he reckoned was an exact total of 284.

We look forward to finding out more about the new JBA Falcon Sports in due course and if it features the same quality as Bill’s first demonstrator it should be very good indeed. One thing it probably won’t feature though is BMW mechanicals, which is a shame. This is due to JBA Motors struggling to find suitable reconditioned gearboxes. It hasn’t been confirmed yet but we heard whispers about Ford EcoBoost possibly supplying power…

In the meantime, find out more via www.jbamotors.co.uk or 01508 493 205 ENDS.