The Classic Car Show is no Top Gear, but that doesn't stop me liking it

TOP GEAR is back on form. It seems that no matter how much the tabloids knock its presenters for offending everyone from here to Argentina, the show keeps gorging itself on spinach and coming back even stronger.

Even though it’s been years since it’s done a properly down-to-Earth, sensible set of wheels you really can’t fault it for entertaining motoring telly. I laughed like a drain when Richard Hammond’s ambulance used a pressurised gas cannon to fire a patient through the window of a makeshift hospital, and the race across St Petersburg between a Renault Twizy, a bike, a hovercraft and a Stig was genuinely exciting stuff.

But Top Gear keeping on the edge of your sofa in an occasionally offensively entertaining way is nothing new. All anyone has wanted to ask me this week is what I think of The Classic Car Show.

Chances are – if the petrolhead consensus I’ve been following is anything to go by – you’ll have reached one of two conclusions having watched the opening episode. Either you’ll have been switched off entirely by its unashamedly upmarket, glossy take on the world of old cars and vowed never to watch it again. Or you’ve already committed to watching all 13 episodes because a) it’s motoring telly and you’d rather watch it than Emmerdale, and more importantly b) because it has its moments of brilliance. I’m in the latter camp.

There have been things about The Classic Car Show that made my mind melt slightly – there will, for instance, be a special place reserved at the back of my mind alongside Katie Hopkins and failed 2006 rom-com You, Me and Dupree for the vapid awfulness of the piece which asked Tinie Tempah for his opinion on the Mercedes-Benz 300SL Gullwing. Quentin Willson, however, tackled the Mustang’s 50th anniversary with genuine clout and authority, and the pieces on the £5000 classic cars – TR7, XJ-S and so on – have been packed with warmth and nostalgia.

In fact, I actually admire The Classic Car Show for daring to do something different. Unless you want Top Gear or a show about two blokes buying an old car, restoring it and flogging it on – and after the success of Wheeler Dealers, they’re ten a penny – there hasn’t really been much for people into cars to choose from.

Regular readers will know I've pleaded with TV’s powers that be for a proper, magazine-format show about cars which is filled with fun and facts in roughly equal measure – the sort of thing Top Gear and Driven used to do when they had to make reviewing the Vauxhall Vectra look interesting. This isn't it, but I like it because it's a fresh take on a subject car nuts love.

The Classic Car Show isn't perfect, but it’s won a slot in my Thursday evenings.

Quentin Willson presents a new TV show you won't want to miss

A NEW TV series for fans of older cars – presented by former Top Gear and Fifth Gear host Quentin Willson – starts on Channel 5 next week.

The 13-part series, called The Classic Car Show, sees Quentin team up with supermodel Jodie Kidd and presenters Alex Riley and Will Best for the one hour shows, featuring buying advice, motorsport and drive stories.

The first episode will be shown at 7pm next Thursday (5 February).

Why I won't be investing in one of the last Land Rover Defenders

MY DAD reckons he’s had a brilliant idea for a bit of automotive investment. Buy one of the very last Land Rover Defenders, stick it in a shed somewhere and make a small fortune after unearthing it in about 20 years’ time. It’s a no-brainer, surely?

Anyone with even the vaguest interest in cars will know Land Rover’s workhorse is a British motoring institution. Despite being treated to new engine once every so often and being given the Defender name in 1990, it’s pretty much unaltered from when it was introduced more than 30 years ago. Whenit finally goes out of production this December it’ll be the end of an era.

There are however a couple of problems with my dad’s cunning scheme, the main one being that Defenders aren’t the cheap, rustic farming runarounds they used to be. Land Rover is seeing out is longest-serving modelwith a trio of special editions, the cheapest of which costs £28,000. The range-topping Autobiograhy version is an eye-watering £62,000, which is a lot of money for a car he’d like to stash away in a shed somewhere.

The other problem, of course, is there’s no guarantee it’d work. Everyone had pretty much the same idea when the Mini went out of production 14 years ago, and the result now is you don’t actually have to look very hard to find X-registered and W-registered Coopers with fewer than 1,000 miles on the clock. As a result, they’re worth barely any more than they were back in 2000.

Then there’s the vexing problem of what you’d actually do with a very old but – showroom fresh – car, because even popping to the shops will ruin the minimal mileage that makes it special. After 20 years of having a Land Rover not moving an inch, all anybody will want to do it is keep it in another shed or put in a museum, which defeats the point of it being a car.

If I were lucky enough to be able to afford one of the very last of the old-school Land Rovers, I’d take it down muddy tracks and use it to pull stranded motorists out of snowdrifts – in other words, using it for what it’s meant for.

Even if there was the remotest prospect of making a couple of quid in the distant future, I’d much rather be out there enjoying this fantastic British institution than hiding it away.

Don't miss out on tomorrow's Mini Fair

MINI fans won't want to miss out on this year's Mini Fair, which gets underway at the Staffordshire County Showground tomorrow (25 January).

Not only are there scores of the Alec Issigonis-designed classics to check out, but one of the event's long-running traditions - the chance to win a Mini in a £1 raffle - is back. This year, show organiser the British Mini Club is giving away a 1988 Mini City, worth £4,500.


The show opens at 9.30am. To find out more, visit the event website.

New classic car show in Preston today

CLASSIC CAR owners in Lancashire might want to head to this new event, which takes place near Preston today.

The 10am-4pm event takes place at the Smiths Arms in Lea Town, and is open to all classic vehicles, and if it's a success more gatherings are on the cards at the pub later this summer.

For more information call John Deuce on 01772 760555.

Don't miss tomorrow's Wirral to Llandudno Mini Run

ONE of my favourite motoring events - the Wirral to Llandudno Mini Run - gets underway tomorrow morning (11 January, 2015).

It's not only a great opportunity to blow off the festive cobwebs, but you get to see scores of classic Minis from right across Wales, the north of England and the Midlands being enjoyed in and around the picturesque resort of Llandudno.

The run takes more than 100 Minis from Bromborough on the Wirral to Rhos-on-Sea, the Great Orme and into Llandudno, but the best place to see them is on Llandudno's promenade from 11am. The display is held on the town's seafront until 3pm.

If you've never been, these pictures from the event in previous years will give you an idea what to expect...

 

For more information have a look at the event's website.

New classic car gatherings planned for the North West

CLASSIC CAR owners from across the North West are being invited to a new series of monthly meets which begin this spring.

The meetings will be held on the Sunday morning of every month between 9am and 11.30am at the Corner House, a pub and restaurant in Wrightington.

The events are being organised by David Morgan, who is also involved in the long-running New Year classic car meet at Briars Hall in nearby Lathom. Clubs and individual classic owners alike are encouraged to bring their cars along to the inaugural event, which takes place on 1 March (EDIT: incorrect date published on event flyer).

For more information email info@cornerhousewrightington.co.uk or call 01257 451400.

 Click on either of the images to enlarge them for more details

How much of a classic car pop picker are you?

This year's NEC Classic Motor Show was overwhelming but brilliant

PETER Capaldi probably should have landed his TARDIS in the middle of one of Britain’s biggest car shows last weekend.

The National Exhibition Centre might be all the way down in Birmingham but it’s also one of the few shows outside the North West good enough to draw in petrolheads in significant numbers.

Even though I’ve only just got back from four very long days at the NEC, I’d urge anyone thinking of going next year to start planning now. One of Britain’s biggest car shows, I’ve discovered, has an annoying knack of corrupting time and space.

For starters, even though the venue itself isn’t an inch bigger than it was 12 months ago this year’s show somehow managed to squeeze an extra 100 cars in, almost all of which were bathed in the unsettling orange glow you only seem to get from 1970s tungsten lighting. The show itself was also populated by thousands of humanoid beings trudging between the Ford Anglias and Triumph Dolomites; they looked and sounded human, but plenty of them had an unerring ability to talk for hours on end about kingpins and trunnion bearings. I should know, because I’m one of them.

Worst of all, however, is that by depriving you of natural light and overloading you with cars to look at the NEC Classic Motor Show completely screws with your perception of time. The show’s eleven halls had the ability to shrink entire ten-hour days into what felt like twenty minutes, and then to spew out all that vacant time into the period you spend queuing for a Subway meal deal outside. 

Three days to look at 1,800 cars in even the briefest of detail just isn’t enough, which is why if you’re planning on going next year – and if you love cars, you really should – get booking those hotel rooms rather than in 11 months’ time. No matter how blistered your feet end up after wandering around those halls, it’s worth it because of what you get to see.

Despite time and space being utterly warped in this alien, orange-tinged landscape I managed to find plenty of cars to fall in love with. There was, for instance, a one-off Rover P6 rebodied by Zagato, a Ford Capri convertible – a car Ford itself never actually produced – and an utterly wonderful Maserati Sebring I desperately wanted to just drive off the stand and take home. 

Best of all, however, was an unrestored Jaguar XK120, which I could have bought had the NEC’s distortive qualities somehow expanded the tenner in my pocket to £57,000. Maybe next year!

Why the BMW M3 deserves its brutal reputation

THE original BMW M3 is a sort of automotive Al Pacino. Despite having a sophisticated side, you can’t help looking at it and concluding it’s hard as nails.

There have been other go-faster saloons since – in the same way there have been plenty of American gangster films before and since Scarface – but this is the one everyone always remembers. It’s always been held up as being not just one of the greatest BMWs ever made, but one of the best cars, period.

Yet in the same way that I remember feeling weirdly underwhelmed when I watched Scarface for the first time, I initially got behind the wheel of this German performance motoring icon last week, taking it for a brief run and concluded it wasn’t much cop.

Why, I wondered, did people in the distant past of the late 1980s get so fizzed up about an expensive, two-door saloon which was only available in left-hand-drive? Didn’t the descendents of today’s modern man find the dog-leg racing gearbox, where you shift the gearlever backwards to get first, utterly infuriating to use? And why were they going for something which was only so-so to drive in the real world when you could have a TVR S2 or a Ford Sierra Cosworth for less?

It was only as I was pondering these questions – and why the original M3, codenamed the E30, attracts such a whopping premium over its faster successors – that the motorhome in front finally turned off and the road opened up, finally giving me the chance to actually see what one of the most sought after BMWs ever can really do.

It took about 20 seconds for Al Pacino’s automotive equivalent to pummel my scepticism into submission. Only when you take the M3 by the scruff of its neck do you really appreciate that it really is as good as everybody says it is.

You can tell from the howl of its four-cylinder, BMW Motorsport-developed engine above 4000rpm and the sensational handling that this car was developed with one thing in mind; winning races. The M3 Evolution version I drove might only develop 212bhp, which is less than half of what today’s M3 churns out, but because it’s so much smaller and lighter it still feels ruthlessly frantic.

Which is really frustrating thing about driving an E30 M3 – the magic moment when you get its steering and suspension to sing is also the moment you have to back off, because you just know you’ll lose your licence if you carry on.

The BMW E30 M3 not only lives up to every bit of its hard-earned reputation as a roadgoing streetfighter, but it’s a bit too brilliant for British roads. Mess with one at your peril!

Why now is the time to have your say on MoT testing

THERE is less than a week left to have your say about proposed laws which could spell the end of the MoT if - like me - you've got a car made before 1988.

Over a pint last night I spent a good twenty minutes trying to explain the implications of the European Roadworthiness Directive to my tame mechanics, who for the crime of being classic car specialists get the dubious honour of rescuing both my MGB and my MX-5 from their various mechanical maladies. It left me a bit worried - if two classic car mechanics aren't quite up to scratch with what the British Government are currently consulting over, what chance do the rest of us petrolheads have?

Unpeel the proposals from the EU bumph however, and it's fairly simple; in the plainest Northern English possible, the British Government has agreed to implement some form of MoT exemption for cars over 30 years old, as long as - and here's the tricky bit - they haven't had "substantial changes".

As it's a directive from Brussells rather than a fully-fledged law, however, it's entirely up to the boffins at Whitehall to work out exactly what substantial change is, which is why the Department for Transport is currently carrying out a consultation on the issue (albeit one that's not exactly been massively publicised).

It is a hugely divisive issue in the classic car world. I've always been of the opinion that ALL cars should have to go through an MOT (and I was definitely against pre-1960 cars being given MoT exemption) but I know plenty of people who reckon it's a good idea to exempt 30-year-old cars too, plenty of people who'd like classic cars to be tested every two years instead, and plenty of people who just want the European Union to get off our back and let us deal with our own motoring matters ourselves.

Whatever happens though, the important thing is to go on the consultation and get your thoughts across sooner rather than later - the consultation ends next Friday (24 October), so time's of the essence.

Hopefully, someone in Westminster or Whitehall will take note.

We must stop a new scrappage scheme consigning classic cars to the crusher

THERE'S a scary statistic I came up with last week to illustrate the scale of the biggest culling of cars the nation’s ever seen. 

If you took all the vehicles sent to the knacker’s yard five years ago as part of the then government’s efforts to boost new car sales and put them bumper to bumper, the line would stretch from Land’s End to John ‘o’ Groats AND back down as far as Edinburgh. A third of a million cars – most of which had nothing much wrong with them – went to the great garage in the sky.

Chances are if you’ve been reading the motoring publications (including the one I write for) you’ll already know about the metal that met its maker as a result of 2009’s Scrappage Scheme, but if you haven’t it’s worth reading on, because it’s one of the great automotive atrocities of our times. Largely because thousands of perfectly good, and very significant, cars went to the crusher just so someone could have a £2000 discount on a brand new hatchback.

There are thousands upon thousands of entries on the list of cars scrapped in 2009 as a result of the scheme, and it makes for very depressing reading when you see what headed into scrapyards across the country.  52 Porsche 944s, for instance. 45 Jaguar XJ-Ss. Four Riley Elfs. Even a Lancia Delta Integrale, mystifyingly, got chopped because someone somewhere wanted a discounted car instead of Italy’s Escort Cosworth in their garage.

Admittedly, some fairly terrible cars were also consigned to the scrapheap – several hundred Proton Personas, for example – and it goes without saying that some of the cars in the list probably would have been in such poor condition that the best thing for them was to recycle them to make something else. Scrapping a car under those circumstances is fine; I was hugely fond of my old Renault 5 and know they’ve got a cult following, but no amount of fondness was ever going to repair its body rot economically.

Yes, I know the Scrappage Scheme did act as a sort of defibrillator for the UK car market, giving it the jolt it needed at a desperate time, but any price that involves sacrificing a Jaguar XJ-S 45 times over is too high.

Hopefully we’ll never need the scheme again, but if we do I’d implore the powers-that-be to make sure perfectly good and very lovely old cars aren’t sent straight to the crusher. 

It’s too late to save the motoring heritage we lost five years ago, but we can stop it happening again.

Mazda - please don't ruin the MX-5

AT 2am tomorrow morning (4 September) petrolheads will be treated to an event that’s only happened three times in the past quarter of a century. Mazda will unveil a new MX-5!

Regular followers of Life On Cars will already know I’m a big fan of the rev-happy Japanese roadster and its appetite for British B-roads. In fact, I’m now on my second MX-5 (and before points it out, I know it’s badged as a Eunos), and I’m yet to tire of its never-ending appetite for a blast down the nearest country lane.

It is the one car which - no matter how many times I hear the hairdresser gags – earns the respect of even the most hardened cynics by blending traditional sports car thrills with pretty much unshakeable levels of reliability. I’m the fifth motoring journo I know at Classic Car Weekly’s offices to have owned one, and even a mate who’s been firmly of the MGF-is-better mentality for years surprised me by rocking up in a Mk2 1.8 Sport version the other day. The MX-5 is, I’ve long maintained, the best small sports car ever made.

That’s why the unveiling of the fourth generation car in the early hours of tomorrow morning is such a big deal.

Mazda itself said itself earlier this year the winning formula for what’s gone on to be the world’s best selling sports car is a lightweight design and perfect front-rear weight balance, so every keen driver from Norfolk to North Virginia will be hoping Hiroshima’s best engineers haven’t forgotten how to make a cracking car.

Jeff Guyton, Mazda’s European president, said: “The MX-5 is the product that best epitomises Mazda’s convention-defying spirit and our love of driving. “It has been grabbing people’s attention for 25 years, and with the new generation model we’re aiming to share this passion with yet another generation of drivers.”

Fingers crossed, then. Mazda, please don’t muck it up!

The Ormskirk MotorFest was proper classic car fun

APOLOGIES if I brushed past you in Ormskirk the other day in the mad rush to make it to my car on time.

My MG was booked in for three glorious laps of Ormskirk MotorFest glory, and I was about 30 seconds from missing out. Regular readers will know I’ve been an avid supporter of West Lancashire’s motorsport-themed spectacular since its inception – it is, after all, the best possible use for Ormskirk’s one-way system – and that my trusty old MGB GT has for years joined scores of other classic cars in the event’s street parades.

What you probably won’t know, however, is that while the old girl made its usual appearance at last year’s event it was actually too poorly to take part in the parades, thanks to an unfortunate incident involving a sprint circuit, historic race ace Barrie ‘Whizzo’ Williams and a slightly misguided attempt by my colleagues to mend a misfire which went horribly wrong. Having decided that West Lancashire’s petrolheads would prefer not to hear an MG which sounded like an East European tractor, I pulled my classic car out of the parades altogether. That’s the joy of classic car ownership for you!

This year, however, I decided it’d be a crime not to get the MG, with all its rattly bits mended, into the parades around Ormskirk’s one-mile circuit. The only problem was that I somehow had to photograph the parades AND take part in them, which was why as the last of the bubble cars tootled up from Coronation Park towards the Parish Church I was nudging my way through the crowds in the opposite direction, eager to get from my photography spot to the MG in record time. With just seconds to go before the classic car parade eased onto Park Road, I got my pride and joy fired up.

It was great not only to be involved in the most exciting aspect of the MotorFest once again, but also to see how the event’s evolved from that single, full-throttle spark of an idea back in 2010.

The most welcome change was the hugely increased emphasis on safety, with barriers installed right the way along Park Road – there’s never been an accident in the parades, but from the perspective of a driver cruising past thousands of spectators it’s good to know the fans have got some added protection!

The event’s still got its uniquely egalitarian atmosphere, where anyone can come and watch an F1 car charge past the bus station and pay nothing for the privelige, but the addition of the autotests, the car club displays and the emphasis on organisation have helped it mature into something with a slicker, more mature feel. It’s also, given the Government’s decision to legalise what are effectively road racing events on closed public roads, a prime example of the spending power petrolheads bring to town centres when they flock their in their thousands for a car show.

Count me in for next year.

Check out the 3 September issue of Classic Car Weekly for David's full report on this year's Ormskirk MotorFest

Life On Cars is five years old!

 

IT'S great to reflect that Life On Cars is now five years old* and - by some stroke of luck - is still going from strength to strength.

Since its humble beginings with a broken-down Mini back in 2009 there have been hundreds of show reviews, test drives, comment pieces and features - and, of course, it's still a regular fixture each week in the pages of The Champion newspaper.

In an idea not-at-all-inspired by Chris Evans' seven-themed displays at the CarFest events, I've decided the best way to mark the anniversary is by looking back at five of the best 'fives' from five years of Life On Cars.

Click on each to find out more about each of these memorable motoring moments...

Five.... unforgettable drives

1) Blackpool Illuminations in a Mini
2) The Buttertubs Pass in Suzuki Swift Sport
3) The New Forest in a Jaguar XK150 (pictured)
4) Derbyshire Dales in a Lotus Evora S
5) North Wales in a Mazda MX-5

Five.... shows you won’t want to miss

1) Lydiate Classic Car Show
2) Cholmondely Pageant of Power
3) Lakes Charity Classic Car Show
4) Goodwood Revival
5) Ormskirk MotorFest

Five.... fantastic Life On Cars moments

1) Raising much-needed cash for charity (pictured)
2) Seeing Life On Cars printed in a national motoring publication
3) Winning a national award
4) Landing a job at Classic Car Weekly
5) Getting printed in The Champion

Five.... moments we’d rather forget

1) Taking an MGB at Curborough - and not doing it much good (pictured)
2) The Volkswagen XL1 being accidentally referred to as a Vauxhall in print
3) Selling the Mini and the Renault 5 within a week of each other
4) The Mondeo’s premature demise
5) Spinning my first MX-5

Five.... greatest cars we’ve tested

1) Ford Fiesta (2009)
2) Honda CR-Z (2010)
3) Citroen DS3 Racing (2011)
4) Morgan Threewheeler (2012, pictured)
5) Suzuki SC100 (2013)

For all these reviews, plus dozens of other road tests, visit the Fire Up The... section.


*Or rather it was five years old last week, but I might have been away on holiday on the big day. Oops!

The Triumph Stag needs its own adjective

THE OTHER week I mentioned one of my petrolhead pals was threatening to blow five thousand of his carefully earned pounds on a Triumph Stag.

Luckily, he saw sense at the last minute and decided not to; he decided to chuck seven and a half bags of sand at one instead. That’s £7,500 on a 1970s convertible best known – unfairly or not - for its penchant for rotting and munching through head gaskets at the first hint of overheating. To make matters worse, even if you bag a really good one it’ll still struggle – and I’ve seen the fuel bills to prove it – to top 25 to the gallon. 

However, all of this pales into comparision with the really unhinged bit – almost immediately after doing the deal, the mate in question lobbed the keys in my direction and insisted I had a go. I returned half an hour later with an enormous grin on my face – and not even remotely envious! 

The tricky thing with the Stag is that while not being superlative or extraordinary in any one particular field, it covers all the bases with a caddish charm that’s surprisingly hard to pin down in print. It’s so difficult to define what underpins the Stag’s essence that it’s actually easier to associate it with things which have the same delightfully dated and yet somehow cool sense of aspiration. Things which are, in other words, a bit stagulent. 

Roger Moore, for instance, is stagulent, as were his attempts to charm Britt Ekland in The Man With The Golden Gun. Velour jackets and polka dot shirts (especially worn together) are stagulent, as is playing golf. Flying on Concorde was always a bit stagulent, as are Joanna Lumley, Directors Bitter, the whole of Harrogate, and reruns of The Persuaders!. Cars other than the Triumph Stag can be stagulent too; try the Jaguar XJ-S, or today’s BMW 6-Series Convertible and the Jaguar F-type. 

That’s why you’ll either ‘get’ Triumph’s V8-engined, Italian-styled, leatherette-lined cruiser or you won’t. It’s not the fastest, the nimblest, or best-built car you’ll ever drive but the looks, the rumble of the 3.0 litre engine when you shove the automatic gearbox into kickdown and the way it just lollops along effortlessly acts an automotive passport to some parallel world where everything is a bit more stylish, albeit in an irredeemably gaudy sort of way.

In short the Triumph Stag is thirsty, badly-made, not especially fast and looks like it’s escaped from a casino in 1970s Monte Carlo. I love it.

Image courtesy of Classic Car Weekly and Sam Skelton

The Life On Cars Mini resurfaces - here's why I didn't buy it

SUPPOSE you’re invited out for a drink with an ex you haven’t seen in years. You’re curious – perhaps even slightly sentimental – but you know it ended for a reason. What do you do?

That’s the way I felt the other day when the first car I ever owned turned up, completely unexpectedly, in an online auction. Naturally, it piqued my curiosity, and I’ve almost certainly spent far longer than anyone really ought to keeping track of all the bids a rather ropey, 30-year-old Mini.

It proved, given I’m exactly the sort of car lover who develops an attachment to what everyone considers to be automotive tat, to be a weirdly bittersweet experience. Even though there was no shortage of people egging me on, I couldn’t bring myself to do the motoring equivalent of getting back with your first girlfriend. I resisted the temptation to stick in a bid on the 1984 Mini Mayfair which for several years accompanied the logo of this very blog.

Not that I didn’t look back longingly, of course. If you really, truly love cars then your first outings in your own car are something you’ll reminisce about as fondly as your first kiss or your first pint, and for me those tentative initial trips in that Mini will be forever stacked away as wonderful memories. Being behind the wheel of A860 JKC meant the first time I ever took my own set of wheels to a car show, my inaugural motoring holiday and finally being free of bus stops. It was so much more than just a car.

That’s why seeing it up for sale in almost exactly the same state in which I sold it left me feeling sad. Contrary to previous belief, any plans to restore it to its former glory seemed to have fallen by the wayside – in fact, the 2009 Woodvale Rally plaque I’d fitted was still cable-tied to its chrome grille. The only difference was that four years ago my old Mayfair got driven away; it got sold online as a non-runner.

In the end I resisted the temptation, largely because despite the supersized helping of nostalgia my abiding memory is of it being a car which you could rely on to let you down. I watched as it went under the virtual hammer for £120 more than I sold it for; I can only hope it went to someone who’ll love it as much as I did, and can rescue it using the funds I didn’t have back in 2010.

Despite the bittersweet ending, I realised I’d learned two things from watching my first car being snapped up. For one thing, old Minis really have shot up in price over the last few years – that’s why even ones which really weren’t very good, like mine, get snapped up.

But perhaps more importantly, I remembered it’s better to have loved and lost an old car than never to have loved it at all.

New classic car show planned for Southport

CLASSIC car owners in and around Southport are being urged to get involved with a new charity event being held in the resort next month.

The event, which is being held at the newly-refurbished Kings Gardens near the Promenade, will take place on Saturday, 23 August and raise funds to help treat Merseyside residents with neurological disorders.

It’s free for owners of classic car and motorbikes to show off their prized vehicles, but anyone keen to get involved must request an application form by sending an email to info@lot21.co.uk.

The Life On Cars MGB does MG90

Click on the image for a full size version of the article. All rights reserved by Classic Car Weekly.

How to organise the perfect car show

IN PRETTY much the same way plenty of my pals like to shout instructions at Liverpool players even though they’re no good at the game themselves, I’m guilty of being that guy who reviews car shows even though I’ve never actually organised one.

It’s that time of year when every stately home, village green, municipal park and playing field seems to host its own car show. Thanks partly to my day job and partly due to being a glutton for punishment, I’ve spent pretty much every weekend, for as long as I can remember, wandering around them. Yet the only constant – apart from them featuring displays of cars, obviously - is the incredible amount of effort the organisers put into getting them off the ground. Passing comment on where they could do better is a bit like you telling Roy Hodgson how he could have got England’s boys to have done better in Brazil, surely?

But when you spend every single weekend wandering around classic car shows (and last year, a bit embarrassingly, I ended up at more than 40 of them) you soon get an idea of what works and what doesn’t. You end up wondering how the rather obvious opportunity for a striking car display right in front of the stately home somehow got missed, why all the ropey cheeseburgers from the mobile catering vans always seem to cost £5.50, and whether the people in charge forgot to invite anyone other than Austin Cambridge and Morris Minor owners. 

That’s why I found it so refreshing to wander around what I reckon was the perfect car event. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the Lakes Charity Classic Car Show, held last weekend on a playing field in Grasmere.

I’ll skip past the postcard-perfect Lake District venue – if Wordsworth did car shows, this is what they’d look like – because just about everything else about the show was spot on. Every single car, bike and tractor, with the notable exception of a few last-minute entries, was carefully catalogued in a programme that didn’t cost a million pounds to buy, and what you did have to pay went straight to charity. The organisers couldn’t have been more helpful, the grub was sensibly priced, hastily-arranged ‘entertainment’ from long-forgotten rock bands was pleasingly absent and there was a great, friendly atmosphere.

Most importantly, however, they’d got the most important bit – the cars – right too. It was utterly refreshing to be able to check out some intriguingly and fantastically rare old cars, like one chap’s 1952 Marauder Sports, before wandering all of ten yards and debating whether the Ford Probe is old enough to considered a classic yet.

Getting a car show just right is a tricky old thing to do and I reckon the closest thing we’ve got on our doorstep is the (equally charity-orientated) Lydiate Classic Car Show. Roll on Sunday!