The 107 Station Wagon was only in production for a couple of years with a total of around 7000 being manufactured, of which a mere 258 were sold in the UK, according to figures from the Series One 107 Register.

Approximately 100 vehicles are known to be still in existence and of those only about half are actually road worthy. Unfortunately the development of the 107's is not particularly well documented in terms of technical drawings and this occasionally leaves restorers with some unanswered questions, particularly regarding the chassis.

Marslands wanted to produce a replacement 107" Station Wagon Chassis and decided the best course of action was to combine existing data from a 109" model with actual measurements taken from an existing vehicle. In order to get the original measurements it would be necessary to completely strip an existing vehicle, as luck would have it there happened to be a suitable example resting in a field just across the valley from the work shop.

Following some negotiation with the owner a deal was done and the job of extracting the 107" from the mud and nettles began.

Severely weathered by the elements, this 107 Station Wagon looked well past it's best before date but hopefully it would at least provide some of the missing measurements.

Recovering it from the undergrowth required the full strength of the Electric Winch to drag it onto the tilt bed trailer as most of the running gear was seized solid.

A short drive to the Marsland Chassis workshop and the next challenge was to get it OFF the trailer, this time a heavy duty towing strap and a 4WD Fork-truck provided the necessary muscle.

After a good pressure washing the full extent of the decay could be seen, and it certainly wasn't pretty.

The decision was taken to salvage as many parts as possible and renew or re-manufacture the rest of the components required in order to rebuild the vehicle to test out the new chassis.

So what started out as a simple fact finding mission turned into a full scale restoration.

When tackling a project of this size it is important to keep track of all the parts and even more importantly to keep track of where they came from, so everything was meticulously logged as it was taken apart. The bulkhead was beyond redemption and was destined for the skip, so a new replacement was quickly ordered, there were however many unique parts that could be restored and these were carefully removed.

Other bits and pieces did not respond to friendly persuasion, so finally the blue spanner was required to complete the dismantling but only where it was obvious new parts were going to have to be made.

After ten years exposed to the elements on the hillside the chassis was pretty well gone.

Close inspection showed one rear chassis rail had been previously patched up with a couple of flat plates and a replacement outrigger, but fortunately the other rail looked pretty original and was used to provide the basis for the benchmark measurements to complete the Computer Aided Design drawings for the replacement.

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