"Yes, a private one," the youngest, Jim (61), the engineer, replied, with a chuckle.
"Cliff (70) is our dress-maker. He does the bodywork."
Ivan (71) is the wood worker, his handiwork evident in the steering wheel of his 1922 Lorraine-Dietrich B36.
"We must all have mechanical aptitude," Jim mused, as the brothers recalled their Green Island boyhood, building trolleys from scrap metal and "cannibalising" their mother's bicycle for a speedier mount.
Their first joint project was a clubman-style sports car, with a Ford Prefect engine in a 1937 Austin 7 chassis, built by Cliff and Jim, in 1964.
Amalgamating letters from Ford and Austin, Jim settled on the name Furi.
Skipping to 2006, Furi number 14 was the Bennett brothers' most recent collaboration.
Given the extra designation of BMV (Bits of Many Vehicles), it combines Pine Hill resident Jim's design and mechanical skills, Cliff's panel-beating expertise, and assistance from some SOBs (Skilled Older Blokes), Jim said.
Furi 14 was built over eight years as a spare-time project and took about 2000 hours of labour.
The time span seems minimal compared to the two decades it took Cliff to finish his "Picton blue" Lotus Europa Spyder.
He bought the remains in 1975, after the car had been all but destroyed in an accident, and restored the chassis and running gear in six weeks.
"Then I bought a house and it sat in my basement for 20 years," Cliff, of Burnside, said.
Finally registered in 1997, it uses a Renault 16 engine and has a custom-designed aluminium body.
Outram-based Ivan, professed to having "probably led them all astray", when he bought his first race car, a Morgan Plus 4.
Cliff quickly followed suit, buying a Morgan 4/4 and the pair both drove in the 1962 Dunedin Street Race.
Ivan's 1922 Lorraine-Dietrich B36 was rebuilt in 1980 from the remains of three of the French tourers, brought out from England and left to rot on a Waitaki farm.
While the three projects might each have their individual owner, a little piece of each Bennett brother ends up in every enterprise.
