Home
Build Diary
Links
News
Information Wanted
   
   
   
Site last updated:
2nd September 2009
Welcome

The Road Rat

The Road Rat is a kit car designed and produced by NCF Motors Ltd, a small kit car company based in the North East of England. It is a space frame chassis panelled with galvanised steel sheet and utilising Fiat Panda MK1 mechanical components to produce a distinctly unusual fun vehicle which is fully road legal. The chassis can accept either Panda FWD or 4x4 running gear and my particular car was orginally built using the parts from a 1986 4x4.

The first Road Rat prototype and company demonstrator was built sometime in early 1994 using FWD Panda mechanicals and was reviewed in the June '94 edition of Which Kit? magazine. At the time of the review six orders had been placed for kits but actually only five were ever produced, including two company demonstrators, making these something of a rarity now. The pictures below are of my car (the red one) and the first demonstrator. The pictures of the NCF company demonstrator are scanned from the Which Kit? June '94 review. The obvious differences between my own car and the original demonstrator are that the demonstrator is a 4 seater open top design, whereas mine is an enclosed two seat cab with rear load area, mine also having extra bracing between the roof and the rear chassis rail.

The first NCF Road Rat demonstration vehicle.

Another view of the first NCF Road Rat demonstrator.

My car shortly after starting the rebuild.

My car as of March 2009 (last time I worked on it).
The pictures of the demonstrator give a good idea of what mine will look like when it's complete. I intend to modify mine slightly to attempt to make it better looking and give it a more rugged, off roader style look. Modifications I have already implemented are:
• Made an entirely new front panel from 40mm x 40mm box section steel incorporating new Metro headlights, indicators, BMW driving lights and original Panda MK1 front radiator grille.
• Made a rear bull bar incorporating the rear lights.
• Added a modified Panda sump guard.

Further modifications I have planned include:
• Fitting bucket seats and three point harnesses.
• Fitting Cinquecento Sporting alloy wheels with off-road tyres.
• Adding Land Rover style aluminium chequer plate panels in various places.
• Making a fuel tank guard.
• Making the rear load area completely flat with aluminium chequer plate with an access hatch for storage under the load deck like the Hibak 4x4 (see picture below).

HiBak 4x4 by Dakar Motors. Inspiration for some mods to my Road Rat.
New Information!
I have recently discovered the existence of another Road Rat, alive and well in Sussex. See the news page for more details. Among the photos I have obtained from the owner were some from when they collected their car from NCF, and these show the second company demonstrator. This one was 4x4, whereas the first demonstrator was 4x2. The following two pictures are reproduced here with the kind permission of Ian and Susan Goode.
This project will necessarily take quite a long time to come to fruition as I don't get to work on it very often, me living in South Wales, and the kit being located in County Durham. As a result, this site will see infrequent updates on the progress of the actual rebuild, but I am also trying to discover what happened to the other four Road Rats so will post my progress on that as well.

Please check the navigation links at the top of the page for more information on my car and progress reports on the search for the missing Rats.