OPINION
John takes in the delights of the Classic Motor Show
A week ago, as I write this, I went to the Classic Motor Show at the NEC. It was encouragingly well attended, suggesting a good state of health for our hobby. As a member of the Singer Owners' Club for an amazingly long time I began my visit on the club's stand, where a fine display consisting entirely of various flavours of Singer Nine – including an unrestored and functional 1934 Le Mans race entry – marked the Nine's 80th birthday.
It was the most obviously pre-war flavoured of all the club displays I saw. There have been fears that interest in pre-war cars is declining as demographics change and the cars become more remote from people's experience, but judging by the great interest in these Singers there is little cause for alarm. It seems that a younger generation is keen for the joys of cars quite unlike those they grew up with, and the growing number of young competitors in events run by the VSCC and the 750 Motor Club further bears this out.
When I set out from the Singer stand to take in the rest of the show, I soon discovered that what some clubs displayed and what I would have liked to see were often not the same. This could simply have been an effort to attract casual attention, as with the customised VWs that always visit shows while the pristine standard cars stay at home. It was a similar story at the MX-5 Owners' Club, whose MkI – the most relevant example of the breed to the show – was massively modified and blinged up. Beautifully done, yes, but I would have liked to see a timewarp factory original as well.
Joyful discoveries
There were nuggets of joy for a deep enthusiast like me. One was found at the DKW Owners' Club. DKW/Auto Union's transformation from humble two-stroke machinery to mainstream family cars with a quality edge has always intrigued me, and this club had brought together two cars that marked when the transition occurred. Both were red, with the same bodyshell, but the DKW F102 had three cylinders and no valves, the F103 (aka the Audi 60, this one a Swedish barn find) had a four-cylinder engine of Mercedes design and unfeasibly high compression ratio behind its facelifted nose. The Audi brand started right here.
Mostly, a club can display only cars that members are willing to provide. Similar constraints apply to permanent displays, too, as became clear when I spent an afternoon at Gaydon's British Motor Museum at the end of a run organised by the Guild of Motoring Writers. I was in my Singer Gazelle, so I was infused with the departed spirit of the Rootes Group as we assembled for a presentation on the museum's fu
