Who knows about the Heron?

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The car above might look familiar to some of our readers. If you cast your mind back to September of last year, we featured a similar car that initially defied identification but was eventually revealed to be a Heron 750, a glassfibre shell from the 1960s that was designed to fit an Austin Seven chassis. The rather sad example spotted at Beaulieu Autojumble was one of only a couple of these pretty cars known to survive. Now another example has come to light, this one an even rarer saloon derivative with a fixed roof rather than the removable hard top of the other survivors.

The Heron was the brainchild of one Derek Bishop, who designed and built the prototype in 1960 and shortly afterwards entered into production building replicas in his workshop in Calvert Road, Greenwich, London. In 1962 a redesigned Heron model, a fixed head coupé named the Europa and based on Ford Anglia running gear, was launched. Only around 12 examples were built before car production ended and the company concentrated on making glassfibre hard tops and accessories for MGBs, Midgets and suchlike.

The very first Diva GT used a Heron bodyshell, and so did the first of Peter Monteverdi's road cars, the MBM Turismo. After Europa production ceased, a Lancashire company named FWM Engineering Co offered their own version, called the FWM GT, but it is doubtful this ever entered production.

The owner of this car, which has recently emerged from long-term storage, is on the hunt for more information pertaining to Herons and their creator. If Mr Bishop is still around, we'd love to put them in touch. Anyone else who can add to the story, once owned a Heron, or can remember this example from the dim and distant past is encouraged to leave a comment below, too.

Originally published on June 6, 2020

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