I'm going senile. Car ID please

My guess is it's a clip-on fibreglass bonnet/wings. Too much wrong with the front third, but the bulkhead back pretty much stock GT6. Tasty wheel trims excepted ;-)

The body shape was used for the works Spifires in 1964 and 1965 - the GT6 wasn't introduced till 1966. It's a replica of the Le Mans car, not "wrong".

The early Spitfires were called the Spitfire 4 rather than Mk1 which years ago could cause some confusion when somebody saw an ad for what they thought was a MKIV and found they were looking at a car with a

1963 registration. The soft top bodywork proved not to be robust enough for the factory to produce the intended Spitfire 6 . As you say the hard top needed the bigger engine to lug it. It was a relatively easy conversion to do as the mounting holes for the larger engine were already in place on the chassis. Too simple really as many just did that without uprating the brakes or suspension which meant that some Home grown Spitfire sixes were a bit dangerous with a too heavy engine for the front suspension. Back in the seventies some bloke did a proper Q car job on a Spitfire using a TR6 I 2.5 engine and running gear to match. He used to enjoy sparring with E type jags on the Surf run to Cornwall.

G.Harman