No, you’re not looking at some rogue review from a classic car website. The Pembleton T24 you see here is as fresh to market as any other car on these pages, the only difference being that its raison d’être is eschewing, rather than celebrating, new technology.
Pembleton was formed in 1999, initially producing chassis for self-build, vintage-style three-wheelers, of which around 400 were sold. Since then, Phil Gregory has passed on the company to his son Guy, who has become its very youthful MD. Pembleton now produces two road-ready models: the V-Sport three-wheeler and the T24. Both cars are hand-built in small numbers (10 per year for the T24) by a highly skilled team of five in a small village deep in rural Worcestershire.
If you perceive vintage cars to be undependable and complex to control but still fancy capturing an essence of motoring from that era, the T24 is equipped with sufficient 21st-century componentry to reassure on the reliability front, while making driving relatively straightforward.
Key to this is the powertrain: an air-cooled, four-stroke, 853cc twin from motorcycle maker Moto Guzzi, its cylinders configured in a 90deg vee, sitting before the front axle, gloriously naked between the car’s front wheels (a lower-powered 744cc unit is also available). With a mere 78bhp delivered to said wheels through a four-speed transaxle from Citroën (but with Pembleton’s own linkage and ratios), the prospect of giant-killing performance looks slim. But the T24 is a slip of a car, with a dry weight of just 361kg, giving it 216bhp per tonne. So while it’s no Caterham Seven, it’s no slouch either.
