Why The Monte Hospital? Well, early in 1991 our founder started to make and sell body panels to finance the restoration of his own Montecarlo as he had promised his wife the rebuild would be self-financing! His car was by this time two-thirds of the way through restoration. Then in June of '92 he was asked by a friend if he would restore another car for him. A little time after that, with two Montecarlos on the drive, both stripped out and being worked on, he remarked that the place was starting to look like the A+E department of a hospital. Fortunately it seems there must also have been a maternity ward, and that's how The Monte Hospital was born.
Our People
Rod Shipley
Acknowledged as one of the anoraks of the Montecarlo world, Rod has been actively involved with Montecarlos and Scorpions since the early 1980s. He's owned more than ten different Montecarlos since 1991 and has yet to finish the first restoration he started! Despite being incredibly old the flame that was lit at the 1976 Earls Court Car Show burns just as brightly today. As well as overseeing the installation of our new software and systems, when he's not dealing with customers from all over the world Rod spends his time liaising with our many manufacturing suppliers ensuring that many 'new' parts we've been asked for become available.
Linda Shipley
Linda's firm hand on the behind-the-scenes tiller helps ensure that the parts you order are despatched promptly and without fuss. A long-time Montecarlo lover, her first car (provided by the company she then worked for, would you believe?) came on the scene in 1982. Linda's contribution to The Monte Hospital covers customer liaison, shipping orders and managing all the accounting functions necessary to any small business, as well as a huge amount of behind-the scenes work negotiating with delivery companies and dealing with the myriad new rules and regulations governing exports no that the UK is no longer a member of the EU.
Sourcing and Manufacture
The Monte Hospital has always put the welfare of your cars first and has tried to ensure that all the parts you ask for go into production. We started out making steel panels and, as the business grew, we began to offer an increasing number of other spare parts. These were supplemented by parts of our own manufacture, driven by our desire to improve the car from the point where Lancia left off. To that end the business now has three distinct aims. Firstly we supply Standard Parts sourced from both OE and aftermarket suppliers. Secondly we supply re-manufactured parts produced by an ever-increasing number of outside suppliers. Finally we offer a range of Performance Parts. With assistance from experts in the fields of tuning, suspension and braking we have developed significant improvements in these areas. However our dedication to improvement has not been at the expense of the standard parts and many 'new' standard items like engine mounts and window trims have been re-created. If we badger our suppliers for long enough and give them the right specification, we usually find the parts we want in the end. Correct water pumps, rear wishbone bushes and ball joints are but three examples of parts that were 'no longer available' in the '90s but which you can usually obtain off-the-shelf at The Monte Hospital today. As time goes by (and remember - today even the youngest Montecarlos are now 40 years old) we find more and more parts are no longer available off the shelf. This has led us to make a massive investment in re-tooling, something we will continue to do in the future to ensure our cars will be maintained, repaired and restored for future generations to enjoy.
World Leader
Our name may have been born out of a joke, but the reality is far from that. In the 31 years since its inception The Monte Hospital has recreated a huge range of parts. Where parts no longer exist they have been remade from scratch. Many parts which were not generally available have been "rediscovered". The Monte Hospital constantly seeks new parts and sends out for samples to check either their fitness for the purpose or to see if they can be modified to fit our cars. We may be small by comparison to some of our competitors but our commitment to your cars is second to none. Our variety of parts is unsurpassed, with a large number of parts manufactured exclusively for us. Back in 1991 it was just ten panels, today The Monte Hospital is the only company in the world devoted exclusively to Lancia Montecarlos and Scorpions.
The Future
The future of the Montecarlo and Scorpion is assured. Thanks to The Monte Hospital parts availability is better than it has been since the early 1980s, before Lancia themselves ceased to support the cars. Of course all of this is only possible with your continued support, and support is a two-way affair. With your help and encouragement over the years we have grown to meet your needs, and we now supply all of the of the parts you ask for in 90% of the enquiries we receive. We may never get to meet 100% of every requirement but we are certainly trying to!
During the 31 years the Monte Hospital has been in existence we have always tried to pursue a policy of improvement to our service and expansion of our product range. Over the years this has proved very successful, so successful that we realized we needed to expand. When our founder decided to retire in 2007 he sold The Monte Hospital - ignition lock, every bit of stock and some oil in a barrel - to Rod and Linda, who had been working alongside him since 2005. This led to the business being re-located from his spare bedroom to a small workshop in Wiltshire. Eighteen months later we moved into larger premises on the same site and in 2013 we completed our third move to even larger premises before setting up a purpose-built new 'home' in 2018 where, for the first time, we have a proper facility that meets all our needs.
The increasing scarcity of parts from OE and aftermarket suppliers has seen a shift of emphasis towards more and more manufacturing, and of course our founder's retirement left a huge hole until we could outsource the parts that he had patiently hand-crafted for so many years. Despite the massive personal investment this has called for we are quietly confident that we will continue to be able to supply virtually everything an owner will need to keep our cars on the road for the foreseeable future.
But....
Please read our latest update on the availability of steel body and structural panels. Right now thanks to Brexit and COVID we don't have a supplier, though we own moulds, jigs and patterns for the majority of these panels. Will we be able put them back into production? Read our 'Body and Structural' information page for the full story.