A couple of petrolheads from Rushenden are holding a bikini car wash to raise money for the hospital unit that saved their daughter’s life.

Adrian Swift and fiancee Amber Harding’s little girl had a difficult birth.

Amelia, who is now 10 months old, was born at Medway Maritime Hospital, Gillingham, but after complications she was taken to its Oliver Fisher Neonatal Intensive Care Unit.

Miss Harding, 31, said: “She wouldn’t be alive if it wasn’t for them. I had an emergency C-section. She wasn’t breathing. It took 20 minutes to resuscitate her. She was put in to a coma because she was fitting every hour.”Amelia was later diagnosed with cerebral palsy and microcephaly – an abnormal smallness of the head.

Miss Harding, of Second Avenue, said her daughter needs physiotherapy twice a day as well as round-the-clock care.

She and her 32-year-old partner, who are getting married next year, are both car enthusiasts.

They decided to turn their passion into a way to raise money for the unit.

Mr Swift is a floor manager at Orbital Mailing, Sittingbourne, but in his spare time he is the event organiser for Japworx, a Sheppey club for connoisseurs of Japanese vehicles.

The fundraiser takes place on Sunday, June 9, at Brambledown Farm Shop, Lower Road, Brambledown, from 11am to 7pm.

Adam Baker, who set up Japworx and is helping with the organising, has asked members to bring along their cars from 4pm so people can have a look while they are cleaned.

It will not just be the ladies holding the chamois leathers.

Miss Harding said: “We didn’t just want it to be the women so we decided that we should also have blokes in shorts too.”

She added that workers at the farm shop car wash are also donating their earnings for the day to the charity.