So, today I had my first taste of 'Britain's biggest one-day car show'. Gary's Simca is currently out of action so we went in his boring modern car instead. Got to Bromley around 8.30 and despite all the horror stories about OMG 7 HOUR TAILBACKS we drove straight in and parked up in the 'all Austin' area a couple of cars down from Autoshiter Alexg in his orange Allegro estate. At this early stage the fields were still half-empty and the cars were scattered about in a somewhat haphazard manner, luckily there was something rather lovely directly opposite us, parked up with a load of boringly modded Minis...
A 'bucket list' car for me (as much as I hate that phrase), not sure I've even seen one up close before so I spent loads of time perving over it and photographing it from every conceivable angle etc. Funnily enough, the owner moved the '0' over a couple of cm later on, giving him an illegally-spaced but slightly more obvious reg. Nice to think he's drilled an extra little hole in the plate and actually takes the time to do that instead of driving around with some tacky/illegal 'show plates'. Definitely way more anal than I'm (hopefully) ever gonna be though.
Another car I've lusted over for years without ever actually seeing one is the 'Badewanne' Taunus. There were about eleventy million Fords there and this was by far the most interesting for me.
The one-make parking arrangement throws up some pretty great juxtapositions, so we have this great old thing parked next to some mental old man's boggo Mk6 Escort saloon with a load of stick-on tat on the front bumper... Number plate vaguely spells out the sound I made when I saw this.
This pair of cute Hondas caught my attention
later joined by their sporty little brother
One of these cars is a classic
As well as the one-make parking areas, there is a lot of space given over to various different clubs. The Jensen club put on a nice display for instance, but my favourite was the Ford Mondeo Owners Club who fielded an impressive line-up of Mk3 Mondeos - no Mk1 or 2s, I presume there is a splinter group ('ORIGINAL Mondeo OC') catering for those cars? Although a layman might mistake these for bland family hatchbacks, they are in fact desirable collectors cars, as the owners proved by vigorously polishing them all day long.
This little DKW was utterly charming and seemed to draw a very appreciative crowd
We found our originally allocated parking spot, which remained empty all day. Hopefully nobody was getting too excited about the prospect of a Simca turning up
This thing was hard to miss! Pretty clear winner for my 'car of the show'. Nice chap who owned it too, seemed surprised I even knew what it was. I spent about 20 minutes just walking around and looking at it, absolutely perfect bit of design.
Not sure what it is about small white Triumph saloons, but some wannabe hardman always ends up standing there trying to look mean and ruining the photo....
Other small white family saloons are less susceptible to such behaviour, being the sole preserve of refined gentlemen. This one appears to be riding dangerously high though...
Crikey, these 'highlights' are gonna go on for ages yet. I'll have to break this down into a couple of installments I think. time to put yer feet up and crack open a bottle of red in the meantime....