A Sunbeam Alpine which survived a military coup in Iraq before being rescued from a garage and restored is one of the star cars at Watton Classic Car Event on Sunday, June 21. Current owner John Simmons tells of its adventures and history.

Little did I know when I rescued a rusting left-hand-drive Sunbeam Alpine that had been parked up in an old garage in Norfolk for nearly 40 years that my search for its history would take me back to July 1958 and a military coup in Baghdad, Iraq.

King Faisal and his entire household were executed as my car beat a hasty retreat from Baghdad, through Europe, to England.

The restoration of the Sunbeam Alpine took more than two years and was finished last year and on Sunday, June 21 it will be displayed in the People's Choice Car Show at the Watton Classic Car Event.

Let's start at the beginning. I had known that the car was rusting away in a shed at the back of a petrol station and workshop at Watton for many years. The owner's late father had taken it in part-exchange to restore but never got round to it. His son intended to carry out the restoration but years passed and it never happened. I had never taken much interest in the car over the years but one day I got talking and ended up as the owner.

The car looked fairly reasonable but it was apparent there was loads of work to do. It had been partly stripped and left. First job was a full strip down to the bare chassis and a trip to the sandblaster. I then realised I had purchased a nightmare. The chassis was good but only 50% of the body came back. Large areas of rusting metal covered by glass fibre had disappeared. There was even a mouse nest in what was left of the sills.

Perhaps I should have called a halt to the proceedings there and then but, knowing I had the enthusiastic help and skill of a local friend, Chris Lowe, I continued with the project. Without his help I would have had to have called it a day.

The car came with a V5 logbook – the owner, being in the motor trade, had the foresight to apply for a new style logbook in 1983 – and an old buff logbook. Unfortunately a copy of the green log book was sent to DVLC (now DVLA) without keeping a record of the previous owners. The buff logbook gave details of two previous owners – one lived in Suffolk and owned the car from 1963 until 1965. I wondered if he might still be alive or have relatives still in the area so I started phoning everyone in the phonebook with the same name – on the second call the woman said 'that's my husband, hang on I will get him'.

The previous owner, now 79 years old, told me about the times he drove the car with the hood down and a cravat round his neck. He had been told the original owner was connected with the aircraft industry and had the car in the Middle East – he thought Kuwait – before bringing it back to England. With little more to go on and little chance of getting more information I told the Sunbeam Car Club the history I had found for its records.

I received an email from Derek Cook, editor of the club magazine Stardust, sending me a copy of a blog he had seen in 2004. It described the memories of a young boy whose father had an Alpine in Iraq in the 1950s. Could it be the same car? There were very few Series 1 Alpines exported to the Middle East. Unfortunately the blogger wrote under a pseudonym and the blog site would not give information of subscribers. I kept coming back to the site for many months and other blogs about Iraq by the same man allowed me to work out his name and some of his history but I was still unable to get a lead until I put in a comment section for his blog 'I may have your father's car' and I got a reply.

The car was owned by his father, Gordon Reid, an ex Royal Air Force officer employed in Iraq to train pilots for the Royal Iraqi Air Force. He had been in Baghdad with his family since 1953 and purchased the car in 1955-56 from a business friend, who was a judge. The owner's son recalled his many trips through the Iraqi countryside over the years – he was about 12 at the time.

In July 1958 the family had to leave the country quickly because of the military coup. Uncontrolled mobs took to the streets killing many foreign nationals, and British families were advised to leave the country. The Sunbeam was quickly sold to a friend who was also English. He had also decided to flee Baghdad and drove the Alpine through Europe and crossed the Channel to England – an epic journey of nearly 4,000 miles and very brave considering the scarcity of petrol stations and motorways in those days.

The car was registered in England in January 1959. I do not know for certain the name of the person who drove the car but I do have the details of an owner before 1962 according to the buff logbook. The name, obscured by a DVLC stamp, is Fell or Bell from Hull and I have written to all six Fells and 160 Bells in the Hull phonebook to see if they know of him. I still have no details of ownership from 1965 until it arrived in Norfolk.