Clubs and businesses say now is the time to make the right choices and show that our hobby takes the environment seriously
Classic experts have called for more to be done to show how eco friendly the UK’s classic car movement is – after facing pressure from climate activists.
At the Forward Thinking seminar hosted by Association of Heritage Engineers, the Bugatti Owners’ Club revealed how it had been contacted by a group of activists looking to protest its activities at its Prescott Hill Climb site.
The club said that it has gone through all of its emissions – including those generated at Prescott and its accompanying club house and restaurant – and come up with a plan to make all its activities carbon neutral by the end of the decade, assuming all of its emissions are a ‘worst case’ scenario.
The club’s sustainability director Steve Dymoke said: ‘The chickens came home to roost when we were given a bit of a threat from a bunch of people who were contemplating putting themselves on the start line, and we were concerned that this is a massive risk for us.
The exposure to that risk of having people glueing themselves to the start line wasn’t just relevant to us as a club, but relevant to the whole ethos of what we do. What’s going on with the climate and how it affects our children resonates with all of us, and I think it was that event that made it really relevant.’
All of the experts taking part in the seminar at Brooklands Museum said that there needed to be a mixed approach to help the UK lower its carbon emissions, calling for less reliance on electric vehicles and more support for synthetic fuels.
The Vintage Sports Car Club (VSCC), which was named as Motorsport UK’s sustainable club of the year for its work on carbon-offsetting its activities, said it was important to demonstrate how the classic car movement is helping to contribute to eco-friendly activities.
Mark Dibben, chair of the club’s sustainability working group, said: ‘I gave a talk at the Schumacher Institute about the work we’re doing at the VSCC. There were a couple of Extinction Rebellion people there, and their reaction was
“Just stop doing it!”, but they began to understand that there are some wider social and psychological wellbeing issues around human beings having fun – if we’re going to be a resilient society, we need opportunities for people to enjoy themselves. So, they were willing to listen to the broader argument that it is possible to do these things without harming the environment.
‘If you’re able to demonstrate that, then the conversation becomes about how these vintage Bentleys were built 100 years ago by humans rather than robots, that they’re endlessly repairable and that the in-built carbon emissions are minuscule compared to those of an electric Polestar or a Tesla
