Banham Conversions


Banham Conversions was a maker of kit cars from the late 1970s until 2004. The company, based in Rochester, Kent, was founded by Paul Banham who started off building convertible conversions on commission. He made convertible versions of the Ferrari 400, Aston Martin DBS and V8, and the Rolls-Royce Corniche.
By the 1980s, he was marketing a kit to rebody the Jaguar XJS. He also offered convertible conversions for the XJS and Jaguar XJ6.
The Banham Spyder was based on the Skoda Estelle and Skoda Rapid and was inspired by the Porsche 550 of James Dean fame. In the 1990s Paul Banham also bought the original bodywork tooling for the Ford RS200 and used it to make kits based on the Austin Maestro. Being front wheel drive it offered both a rear seat and a boot where the engine was in the original RS200.
In the late 1990s he had moved into making Rover based kit cars. Kits based on the Mini were the Roadster and the Sprint.
Kits based on the Rover Metro were the Banham X99. After some intervention from VAG over the origin of its design this was later revised slightly to the Banham X21, the Banham BAT, the Banham New Speedster, the Tiger and the Banham Superbug.
The company was sold in 2004 to Rally Sport Replicas Ltd who sought to create new chassis for the designs, but they ceased trading in mid-2005. The New Speedster was excluded from the sale, and the design and tooling were was sold to 356 Sports during 2006. That company later ceased trading.