The many faces of the Fisher

I came across my file on the fascinating Fisher Spyder recently and was surprised with the many great photographs of this car, perfectly showing the different guises it went through throughout the years. I made only a brief selection for this article as there was so much to choose from.

The Fisher was initiated by Scotsman Jack Fisher of Edinburgh and has always been Mini powered. Work on his Special started as early as 1959 when Fisher acquired an 850 Mini engines from BMC and started to build a chassis. But only when he acquired a damaged Lotus Elite body shell in 1964 he managed to finish it, by that time he'd come up with a brand new space frame chassis with new detachable subframe so that the Mini powertrain could be mounted into the Elite boot. It was road registered 'ASG 182B' and used on the streets but soon only used for sprints and hill climbs.

Some time later a new space frame was made for the car, now using Lotus 23 suspension, disc brakes plus the centre body section including the doors of the ex-Ecurie Ecosse Le Mans Tojeiro! Engine size was increased to 1,150cc and an Arden 8-port head with twin Webers was now fitted, making it seriously fast. But it could do better, Fisher thought, and he remodelled it once again, now with shortened Gropa Spyder body and Lotus suspension. In this guise it set a class lap record at Ingliston where it was a frequent winner in the hands of both Fisher as Edward Labinjoh, who worked as a mechanic for Fisher’s garage. It was restored in 2007 by the current owner Peter Speakman at who's place I photographed it in 2011 for Maximum Mini 2 in the beautiful Lake District.