After TV stardom, a stint with Winston Churchill in the passenger seat as a driving instructor and wartime service during the Blitz, this motoring veteran has been given a new lease of life in the Westcountry.

The 1923 Rolls Royce Silver Ghost, which featured in the iconic 1960s series The Avengers, has been restored to her former glory in a Devon barn and returned to the open road.

And the man behind the refit, classic car enthusiast Charlie Tope, says she could now be worth a cool quarter of a million pounds.

Mr Tope, from Modbury, Devon, said: "It's been a wonderful project but when I took it on I don't think I realised how big a task it would be.

"She may be a car designed for only a couple of passengers but at 16ft long and 7ft wide she is more like a small lorry."

The car belongs to Tania Turner, from Sussex, whose grandfather bought her in the early 1950s for "a few hundred pounds" and spent £2,000 on restoration.

A former chauffeur has claimed that Churchill taught the first female MP, Plymouth Sutton member Lady Astor, to drive in the Rolls at a Kent estate.

During the Second World War, in a move which would horrify car enthusiasts, the car's back-end was cut off and it was converted into a recovery truck with a mini-crane bolted onto the chassis.

Most of the war years were spent doing clearance and recovery work with the auxiliary fire and ambulance service in Manchester.

But it was in the 1960s that the vehicle achieved international fame as the vehicle of choice of Avengers character and dapper English gentleman John Steed, appearing in 18 episodes and suffering the indignity of having a steak cooked on the engine and a ladder smashed through the windscreen.

But at nine miles per gallon, the Rolls was not the most practical of vehicles for everyday driving and it slowly deteriorated in a garage until Tania and Andy Turner decided to bring it back to life.

And after six months of painstaking work the old car is ready for the road again.

"A friend had his old Alvis restored by Charlie and we thought he would be the ideal person to tackle the Rolls," said Mr Turner.

"She looks absolutely fantastic – better than new."