Autocar
Dutch-German track day operator Driving-Fun will move sports car specialist's production out of Britain Westfield, the sports and kit car manufacturer founded in the Midlands 44 years ago as a rival to Caterham, has been sold to a Dutch-German company after going into voluntary liquidation. Driving-Fun, one of Europe’s largest track day organisers, plans to continue building existing Westfield models and develop new road and racing models for what it sees as a strong and active body of enthusiasts. Since its formation in 1982, Westfield is estimated to have put around 16,000 cars on the road. Its new ownerm Dutch-born Peter Tunissen, founded Driving-Fun from scratch 20 years ago instead of going to university like his friends. Today, his company stages more than 100 track days per year, owns two hotels at the Nürburgring and has its headquarters at a track of its own, Circuit Meppen, located about three hours east of Amsterdam, just over the German border in Lower Saxony. Circuit Meppen is located the grounds of a former power station, where Driving-Fun already has a 10,000sq ft factory that Tunissen believes will be ideal for the continuing manufacture of Westfield cars and kits, as well as the spare parts that he already knows are urgently needed by existing owners. Tunissen said his deal extends only to the Westfield side of the failed UK business. The Chesil side, set up to manufacture Porsche 356 replicas, remains unsold, although the UK vendors say “conversations” are currently under way with potential buyers. Westfield’s former boss, Nigel Trilk, said he knows Driving-Fun and Tunissen well from previous contacts and believes he is “a very positive person with great vision”. Tunissen made clear that the Westfield acquisition “is definitely not just a routine business decision”. For years he admired the British-built cars’ combination of high performance and affordability and eventually decided to join the Netherlands’ thriving Westfield Cup racing series, which has been popular for decades and, unlike many series, survived the Covid pandemic in a healthy state. Today, Tunissen uses Westfields for arrive-and-drive customers at Driving-Fun, as well as running more serious race cars. He estimates that there are around 60 race-eligible cars in the Netherlands alone, plus 300 road cars in the country's thriving Westfield Club. However, he is acutely aware of the concerns of the UK’s much larger Westfield community, spearheaded by its “amazing” Westfield Sports Car Club. Although it's less than a month since he started discussing a deal, Tunissen is already talking to two Westfield-literate UK businesses and will soon choose one to become the company’s hub in this country. The ambition, he said, is to make increasingly rare spares freely available as soon as possible and to contain costs that might otherwise become inflated by uncontrolled EU importation costs. For the future, Tunissen and Driving-Fun intend to have their new manufacturing facility running as soon as possible and to develop the cars along racing lines to suit customers’ well-communicated desires. The previous owners recognised that too but never quite managed to get a range of well-developed models to market. Tunissen is likely to benefit from some of that previous product development work, which ran to “several millions” of investment in chassis and engine development. In the meantime, to signal his ambition and good intentions, Tunissen is planning a Europe-wide Westfield owners’ jamboree at Circuit Meppen on 21-23 August, hoping especially to attract many UK visitors. He said he will work at top speed in the meantime “to have something good to show our visitors.” More details will soon be available via a new website, but Tunissen invites all enquirers to contact him via westfieldsportscars@circuitmeppen.com in the meantime. Westfield's history Westfield was established in 1982 by engineer, racer and Lotus enthusiast Chris Smith, who named both the new business and its cars after his house in Dudley, just west of Birmingham. He started making fibreglass-bodied, selectively re-engineered versions of the Lotus Seven and Lotus XI but within a few years ran into legal trouble with Caterham, whose owner Graham Nearn had bought rights to the Seven directly from Lotus founder Colin Chapman. The Westfield Seven’s shape was altered to the court's satisfaction and it became the Westfield SE, the company’s most successful model, which until recently was still in production. In 2007, Smith sold the Westfield business to Frank Turner, a former director of Lucas Aerospace, who with his son Julian turned it to engineering projects as well as continuing car making. Under the Turners, Westfield built the famous autonomous passenger pods at Heathrow Airport, then acquired Chesil before hitting the buffers in 2022. The third British ownership, voluntarily terminated when a key investor recently and abruptly withdrew, lasted only four years before Peter Tunissen's Driving-Fun took over this month.
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