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This month Peter reports on a lifetime ambition fulfilled twice-over, and the ten trips to and from Birmingham that doing this entailed...
► Well, November was certainly a busy month car-wise for yours truly. When, back in the early 1980s, I first became active in the classic car movement, an ambition was to own a car good enough to show at an indoor classic car show. That objective was finally achieved at the 1985 ‘Brighton’ classic car show – an event that used to be held at the Metropole Hotel’s adjacent exhibition centre on the first weekend in November. This date meant, of course, that the Sunday’s show coincided with the Veteran Car Run, the end of which was 10-15 minutes away from the show.
Anyway, I showed my 1966 Morris Oxford – LJJ 39D for those of you who remember such things – and yes, it was fun. Though the Brighton shows ended soon after that, I participated in various other indoor shows – ‘Ally Pally’ and Manchester first, and then the NEC Classic Car Show which effectively took over from Brighton as the movement’s main event.
This year, though, two different clubs asked me to supply cars. First off, the Hillman Owners Club requested the recently-restored ‘Minxy.’ Then, a few weeks later Tanya Field asked if I’d be willing to display the Rover 827 Coupe on the Rover 600-800 club stand. Getting two cars to the show was clearly going to be a challenge, but I guess I saw doing it as a kind of way of not just fulfilling but exceeding twice-over that 1980s ambition. So, I said yes.
The logistics, however, needed careful planning. It was also actually quite a costly business as having two cars at a show that I couldn’t attend full-time, actually involves eight journeys between Spalding and Birmingham – four driving cars there and back, and four returning from delivering and going back to collect! Luckily, I was able to blag a lift to the NEC on the Sunday, but the other three journeys had to be by train.
There are, understandably, restrictions on when cars can be delivered and removed, though in practice few people actually stick to their hour delivery slots. My initial plan was to leave the Rover with a friend in Brum overnight on the Wednesday and then fetch it after I’d bought Minxy over. Then, reading the small print of the show instructions I saw that cars could be delivered between 2pm and 6pm on the Wednesday. So that’s what I did. First, though, the car needed a very thorough cleanup, not least because, as you saw last month a couple of weeks before its NEC appearance, the 827 had been carrying all four Simpsons to, from and around South Wales.
Just one snag; the Wednesday was (very) wet all day, so by the time I arrived, the car was once again filthy. Under normal circumstances I’d have been able to spend the Thursday sorting this, but that wasn’t going to be possible as I’d be drivi
