My 1951 JSR

Only one was ever made and it's sitting in a shed at Mt Tamborine on the Gold Coast hinterland.

Owner Brian Telfer, a car lover who has owned a variety of exotic machinery, came across the JSR in a terrible state with a blown engine.

"I bought it under the condition that the owner find another motor," the 64-year-old semi-retired businessman says. But when he received the replacement engine, it was also in need of major mechanical repairs.

Telfer bought the car for $6000, but estimates he has spent more than $45,000 restoring it to its full former glory. He has learnt the history of the car from Peter Seeliger, the son of the builder. The chassis was built in 1951 in Melbourne's Commonwealth Aircraft Factory by the manager, Ern Seeliger, who had built several other special race cars for personal racing use.

"It would seem that a fair bit of free labour went into it," Telfer says.

Seeliger's biggest claim to fame was in the 1958 Australian Grand Prix when he scored a second place in one of his specials behind a Ferrari driven by Lex Davison. The initials JSR stand for Seeliger's friends, John and Sylvia Rees, and while it was a prototype for a production racer, it was deemed too expensive, so it was the only one made.

The body is steel, the brakes are finned drums, the tyres are special Michelin Englebert racing rubber, the instruments are Jaeger, the three-speed gearbox is Ford, the transverse leaf spring front suspension comes from the American Ford Mercury, it has revolutionary torsion bar rear suspension and the four-litre, side-valve V8 engine is from a Mercury, with Offenhauser heads, inlet twin manifold and twin Stromberg carbies.

It was repainted the original French racing blue whcih was used to resemble the French Grand Prix Talbot Lago cars of the late 1940s.

"I thought I'd go into historic motorsport but I don't have the patience to wait around all day for a run," Telfer says. "I also don't want to be competitive and end up bashing the car around. My cars don't get used much but they get loved."

Telfer also owns a 1951 AC made in Surrey, England, which features the famous all-alloy, two-litre, six-cylinder engine designed in 1918 with crossflow heads, triple carbies and overhead cams. The aluminium body and wood frame AC later became famous when Carroll Shelby shoehorned V8 engines into them.

Telfer bought his AC in 2001 for $6000 from a vintage car broker and spent six years rebuilding it at a cost of about $40,000.

"I did the fiddly bits like brackets, but the serious work gets done by someone else," he says.

Telfer says the car is light and has plenty of go and plenty of whoa, featuring the unusual combination of hydraulic front brakes and mechanical rear brakes.

Telfer also owns a 19790 V8 Aston Martin soft top and has owned an Aston DB6, three Jaguar XJs and a 1973 Maserati Ghibli. "It has one of the prettiest bodies on any car, but I only had it for a year. It is big car and not very practical on these roads."