From Apprentice to....

THE RESTORATION OF JOE MELLOR

A career rebuilt from the ground up — told the way his workshop would tell it

In Joe Mellor’s trade, nothing worth keeping arrives finished. It comes in rough, full of promise, and is brought back better than ever — part by part in patient hands. Which is, as it happens, exactly the story of Joe himself: the apprentice who, twelve years after walking into Tim Walker Restorations, now owns it.

JOB CARD	Joe Mellor — Heritage Engineering Technician (Mechanical)
BOOKED IN	Straight from school, after AS levels did not go as planned
WORKSHOP	Tim Walker Restorations
TRAINING PARTNER	Heritage Skills Academy, from 2020
WORK COMPLETED	May 2026 — released as director and owner

STAGE ONE - As found

Every restoration starts with something others might pass over. In 2014, Joe was a school-leaver whose AS levels did not go as planned — “I thought I would struggle to find work and wouldn’t amount to much,” he says. But the fundamentals were sound. He had been mad about cars all his life; his mum tells stories of him naming them from their hubcaps alone as a toddler. Two days of work experience at a modern Jaguar garage settled the direction: by the third hour, on the same model of car yet again, he was bored stiff. He wanted old cars — where every vehicle carries its own story and no two jobs are the same.

There was just one problem: no apprenticeship for it existed. So he posted his CV to every restorer within thirty miles. Then, driving to an interview and thoroughly lost, he spotted a Vintage Bentley and followed it on a hunch. The driver told him a heritage apprenticeship was just being set up — apply. By coincidence Joe’s CV landed at Tim Walker Restorations twice over, once direct and once through the college. They called him in. He got the job.

“I was lost, so I followed his Bentley — I thought he must be going to the same place.”

STAGE TWO - Stripping back

The first attempt didn’t hold. Joe was among the very first onto a pioneering heritage course run from 2014 in Bicester — “We were the Guinea pigs for something new,” he says — and although he passed, the qualification faded into obscurity. After a sabbatical in 2019 he came back determined to do the job properly: strip it back and rebuild on solid foundations. In 2020, aged 23, he enrolled with Heritage Skills Academy to earn something that would stand the test of time.

Asked how Heritage Skills Academy had supported him through his programme, Joe’s answer was a single word: “massively”. He talks about tutors who noticed if a learner was down or upset, who would come over and check in, and who were always there for you. He still drops in to chat with Matt Salt and the team today. He saw it through.

“The people there are so caring. They’d always be there for you.”

STAGE THREE - The rebuild

This is where the real work went in, and it came from two directions at once. At Tim Walker Restorations, Joe was trusted to work on an exceptional range of valuable and specialist vehicles. HSA helped support and develop that experience, giving him the structured workshop hours, practical coaching and hands-on graft needed to turn real industry exposure into lasting skill.  It was also where he trained alongside apprentices from other restorers: like-minded enthusiasts, all working for different employers, who between them gave him an insight into the rest of the industry he wouldn’t otherwise have had. And HSA, Joe is quick to add, teaches life skills as well — there’s so much that goes beyond restoration. Joe arrived at Tim Walker Restorations with no bank account, no email address, and no idea how to write a cheque. And one block on the course turned out to matter more than any other: the business block. Not how cars work — how companies do. How you manage people, customers, relationships. The apprentice who studied how businesses run would, in time, buy one.

Joe was empowered to look after his own clients, gaining valuable experience in managing jobs from initial estimate through to invoice. He developed confidence in estimating work, speaking with customers and handling more complex conversations professionally. He was also carefully trained to provide office cover during staff absences, including supporting with payroll processes. These opportunities helped him build the confidence, judgement and responsibility that have shaped where he is today.

None of this happened by accident. Kyra Hill, then the office manager at Tim Walker — the same Kyra who had spotted Joe’s duplicate CV and pushed for the interview that got him in the door — had a way of developing apprentices: trust handed out in small batches that grew as the person grew. She has since joined HSA, where she knows every apprentice on the programme by name and is deeply invested in seeing each of them through to their qualification — and the patience and belief in young people that once carried Joe through his apprenticeship now goes into every learner on the programme.

Joe says, simply, that he would not be where he is today without her support. “Thrown in at the deep end is an understatement,” Joe says, and he means it gratefully: those calls and those chances are, in his own words, why he is sat where he is now.

“What we do is incredibly skilled — but there’s so much more to it commercially.”

STAGE FOUR - First runs

The sector took notice. Joe was named Apprentice of the Year at the Historic Motoring Awards in 2021. He also won the Malcolm Davey Award, run by the Alvis Owners Club in memory of a great champion of apprenticeships: a challenge to make a special tool, judged by none other than Sir Stirling Moss. Joe’s entry — an adaptation that compresses the valve springs on an Alvis Speed 25 or 4.3ltr engine without lifting the cylinder head — still earns its keep in the workshop today. He collected the award at the NEC.

Joe was also later named runner-up in the Young Achiever category at the Royal Automobile Club Historic Awards in 2022.

STAGE FIVE - Keys handed over

When the previous owner — son of the founder, Tim Walker — began to think about retirement, he was adamant the firm wouldn’t go to someone who might asset-strip it or fail to understand it. It was only fitting that Joe purchase the shares of the company and continue the strong legacy of Tim Walker Restorations The handover made for the busiest fortnight of his life: he bought the company on 7 May 2026, flew to Greece two days later, and married on 16 May. “It’s been an amazing year so far!” he says.

In the workshop, the respect was already there. He had come up from the very bottom — no outsider buying in — and Matt, the workshop manager there on Joe’s first day and still there now, has backed him the whole way.

“I’ve been there worked hard, and climbed the ladder, and worked my way up — I think people respect that.”

CONDITION ON COMPLETION - Better than the original

The best restorations don’t just return something to how it was — they set it up for the road ahead. Twelve years after a lost teenager followed a Bentley to a job interview, Joe Mellor runs the company that gave him his start, with the next generation of apprentices learning around him. Ask him what the apprenticeship did and the answer is simple.

“Without it, I wouldn’t be here.”                     

"Take every opportunity you're given. The technical skills are important, but the wider skills you learn along the way can change your life."