Car SOS comes to the Black Country
The latest series of the Channel 4 show Car SOS will be filmed at a garage unit in Oldbury. Fuzz Townshend, one of the presenters of the show and former drummer with Black Country indie band Pop Will Eat Itself, along with his business partner Dave Tassell, runs To-Ta Classics, a classic car maintenance and restoration business.
Townshend and Tassell have agreed a five-year lease on a 5,548 square foot unit on the Springfield industrial estate in Oldbury, which is owned and managed by London & Cambridge Properties.
Car SOS is a hit TV show in which decaying classic cars are restored to their former glory. Car enthusiast and TV presenter Tim Shaw joins forces with master mechanic Townshend to rescue rusty old cars to surprise unsuspecting but deserving owners who have been nominated by a relative or friend because of an inability to restore their vehicle themselves due to unforeseen medical and/or financial reasons.
The cars are taken to the Car SOS garage and carefully restored by a specialist car restoration team before being revealed to their owners at a staged event set, usually set up by Shaw.
Some of the cars that have been restored so far include a Volkswagen Beetle, a US Army Jeep that survived World War II, a worn-out 1928 Austin 12 Tourer, 1970 Lotus Elan, 1970 Triumph Herald and a 1938 MG TA.
Three seasons of the show have aired so far, with the fourth about to be filmed at the new Black Country location.