Weekend celebrations for classic Welsh car

Owners of the Welsh Gilbern car are coming together to celebrate the vehicle's history this weekend.

As part of Gilbern Cars National Weekend, car owners around South Wales will drive in convoy through the Vale of Glamorgan, past the old Gilbern factory today.

On Sunday, 50 Gilbern cars will be on display at St Fagans National History Museum.

Founded in the late 1950s by a Welsh butcher and a German former Prisoner of War, Gilbern Cars had its factory in Llantwit Fardre in the Rhondda.

Giles Smith was the local butcher in Church Village near Pontypridd with dreams of making a fibreglass car, when he met Bernard Friese, an Engineer who had stayed on in Kent after the war.

Together they hand-built the first Gilbern GT in 1959, a two-door coupé which was later mass-produced and put on the market.

After changing hands, Gilbern Cars went out of business once and for all in 1974.