Let’s Hustle: Rare six-wheeled kit-car may need some (re)assembly

by Antony Ingram

8 April 2022 2 min read

If you think it’s a pain having to get a conventional car rolling again after it has spent decades in a barn or garage, then the sight of this dilapidated and very much stationary Hustler kit car – with six, count ‘em, six wheels – will bring you out in a cold sweat.

It’s being sold as a restoration project, or spares and repairs, and as the handful of photographs show, it’d definitely take a degree of both expertise and bravery to bring it back from the brink.

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If you do though, you’ll have one of Britain’s more interesting and unique kit cars on your hands. Hustler was started in 1978 and made a range of Mini-based kit cars, each with geometric styling characteristic of its designer, William Towns – the man behind the blocky Aston Martin Lagonda.

The cars clothed four- or six-wheeled chassis (the latter using a pair of Mini subframes at the rear) under flat-sided fibreglass body panels and similarly straight-edged windows. Some also used wood for elements like the sills, as is apparently the case with this car, albeit not pictured.

There’s not a great deal of information in the ad, perhaps not helped by a missing V5, but it appears to be a conventional Hustler 6 – the six-wheeled variant of the original car. Hustler also sold other six-wheeled variants, plus sporty four-wheelers like the Sprint (one of which we found last year) and even a one-off, Jaguar V12-powered Hustler Highlander.

While clearly in need of work, important elements like the glass and the sliding doors seem to be present and correct – and given the somewhat angular nature of the car, replacing parts like glass and bodypanels are likely easier than they would be for something more complex and curvy. With A-series power, dropping in a new engine shouldn’t be a bother either, if the existing lump is too far gone.

Bidding has already risen above £1000, with the eBay auction ending just past 9pm BST on April 13. If you’re handy with a spanner – and don’t mind freeing up six wheels – it could prove an interesting project.