Ghostbusters

It’s like some well-crafted horror movie. You don’t want to see, but cannot help but look. Slowly, inexorably, it draws you in. There’s one there that’s been beaten to a pulp, another blindly staring back at you through empty sockets. One over there is actually still alive, but already beyond the reach of anyone in a position to save it. Silently, stoically, it waits for the end.

It shouldn’t make a difference that these shattered, dead and dying remains come from such noble stock, but it does. You cannot help but think of the lives they once would have led, sweeping across continents, feted at every turn, granted only the most solicitous attention at the world’s finest establishments. And now here they lie, dozen upon dozen of them, rotting and ruined on a small Leicestershire industrial estate.

Yet all is far from what it seems. Despite initial appearances, Flying Spares does not exist to scrap old Bentleys and Rolls-Royces. On the contrary, it’s in the resurrection business. ‘Over 90 per cent of everything that comes to us gets reused,’ says marketing boss Marco Bonanni. ‘There really is remarkably little that can’t be either reconditioned or recycled.’