HE ONCE applied to be the new presenter of Top Gear but Poole car artist Andy Saunders is best known for being one of the world’s leading independent car designers.

His chops and modifications – he can bend, stretch and truncate almost any vehicle - are renowned within the automotive world for their technical brilliance as well as their imagination and he’s produced more than 50 of them.

Now he’s the subject of a summer-long exhibition at Britain’s National Motor Museum at Beaulieu.

‘The Art of Kustom’ – the word is deliberately spelled like that to reflect the ‘radical, flamboyant and stylish’ modifications to its bodywork – which opened at the weekend, will show off some of Andy’s greatest creations.

The exhibition includes Andy’s immaculate 1930’s Cord, a Citroen that looks like a spaceship, a Reliant Rialto race car, a road-going speedboat and the world’s shortest Mini, which, said Andy, is one of the best-known cars from his 40-year career:

Mini Ha Ha will be on show for the first time since it went on display in the 1980s. Andy came up with the original concept while still at school, before building the car on a shoestring budget when he was just 20-years-old. It became his everyday car when he first completed it.

Tetanus is one of Andy’s most widely acclaimed projects, taking 14 years to complete. The 1937 Cord 812 Westchester was in an appalling condition when Andy found it, having spent more than half a century decaying in a Yorkshire field. “I named it Tetanus after my friend said ‘I’m not touching that without a tetanus shot!’” said Andy.

Indecision is a 1976 Citroen CX upon which Andy let his imagination run riot early in his custom car career, installing a heart-shaped bed in the rear, and Run A Ground actually started life as a speedboat.

As part of the exhibition Andy has unveiled his new project, Metropolis. “Basically I’ve transformed a 1939 Peugeot 202 pick-up from a rusty wreck into a stunning Art Deco statement.” he said.

Discovered in a field in France three years ago, the vehicle is believed to have been requisitioned by the invading forces during World War II.