The giants of motor manufacturing are not the only ones to have suffered during the recession: high-performance motor sport has struggled, too, slamming on the economic brakes in a region world-renowned as the county seat of Silverstone, for years the home of the British Grand Prix.

Few are more aware of the area’s motor sport heritage than Patrick Morgan, above, who six years ago set up Dawn Treader Performance, which restores Formula One and other top-end cars for carmakers and wealthy car fanatics.

“I grew up in Formula One,” Mr Morgan said. His workshop in Sywell Aerodrome, to the south of Northampton, is a petrolhead’s paradise. A famous F1 car sits next to a second-place finisher from Le Mans in the 1980s. The chassis and cage of a German touring car is in the far corner.

Mr Morgan’s father was the owner of Ilmor, which made the engines used by the McLaren F1 team. The area boasts two F1 teams, Force India and Brawn, which emerged from a management buyout when Honda abandoned F1.

“Northampton is a natural place to be in terms of the supply base and being able to hop in a car and be at a machine shop or a carbon-fibre maker in 20 minutes,” he said. “We take cars that haven’t run for a long time and restore them back to running condition. They come with no instruction booklets.”

As a small, niche player turning over a few hundred thousand pounds a year, Dawn Treader has not been badly hit by the downturn — but Mr Morgan is concerned, nevertheless, at the effect of the downturn on suppliers and on the skills base.

“It’s a terrible time and people don’t see the knock-on effects, which is that the supply base is shrinking. Even smaller firms are clinging on by the skin of their teeth. There are a lot of very skilled people in this area and it would be tragic if that was lost.”

In the meantime, Mr Morgan promises that he will continue to be faithful to the heritage that has seen him weather the storm thus far.

When restoring cars, he aims to be as true to the original as possible. “We try to avoid the Trigger’s broom scenario,” he said, referring to the Only Fools and Horses gag where Trigger claims he has used the same broom in his 20-year career as a street sweeper — with 17 new heads and 14 new handles.

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