“It took a while for an opportunity like this to come to us,” says Tony Compson, a former marine who served in the Falklands War and is the project’s team leader. “All our cars are donated but most are manual. The fact that the BRZ is also damaged makes this project particularly interesting.

Compson is responsible for the eight veterans working on the project, including a former paratrooper and tank commander, as well as former members of regiments including the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers (REME) and the Royal Logistic Corps.

Everyone brings their own skills and experiences to the job. Well, almost: the bodywork is beyond even them, so while they will do what they can, the final shaping, filling and painting will be done by Dragontek, a local company that provides its services free of charge.

Veterans might need some help as the BRZ, registered in 2016 and with only 25,000 miles on the odometer, is in a bit of a pickle. It may only be a Cat N, but a lot of damage can be done even at this level – and that’s exactly what you can see.

One thing the guys discovered early on was that at one point the roof lining around the passenger side curtain airbag had been repaired to make it look like it hadn’t deployed. It was a failure that set them back, but they are using the time to get all the remaining airbag sensors connected and working.