Banham Conversions

Banham X99

Banham Conversions (Banmoco) was a maker of kit cars from the late 1970s until 2004. The company was founded by Paul Banham who started off building convertible conversions on commission. He made convertible versions of the Ferrari 400, Aston Martin DBS and V8, and the Rolls-Royce Corniche.

By the 1980s, he was marketing a kit to rebody the Jaguar XJS. He also offered convertible conversions for the XJS and Jaguar XJ6.

The Banham Spyder (since the 1980s) was based on the Skoda Estelle and Skoda Rapid and was inspired by the Porsche 550 of James Dean fame. In the 1990s Paul Banham also bought the original bodywork tooling for the Ford RS200 and used it to make kits based on the Austin Maestro (preferably the MG Maestro Turbo version). Being front wheel drive it offered both a rear seat and a boot where the engine was in the original RS200.

In the late 1990s he had moved into making Rover based kit cars. Kits based on the Mini were the Roadster (which converted a Mini into a two seat roadster) and the Sprint (inspired by the Austin-Healey Sprite).

Kits based on the Rover Metro were the Banham X99 (looking very much like the concept car drawings of the soon to be released Audi TT). After some intervention from VAG over the origin of its design this was later revised slightly to the Banham X21 (looking a bit like a Nissan Figaro and Audi TT), the Banham BAT (based on the X21, but with a futuristic styling), the Banham New Speedster (inspired by the Porsche 356 Speedster), the Tiger (inspired by the Sunbeam Tiger) and the Banham Superbug (a modern interpretation of the Mini Moke).

The company was sold in 2004 to Rally Sport Replicas Ltd who sought to create new chassis for the designs, but they ceased trading in mid-2005. The New Speedster was excluded from the sale, and the design and tooling were was sold to 356 Sports during 2006. That company later ceased trading.

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