Showing posts with label classic car weekly. Show all posts
Showing posts with label classic car weekly. Show all posts
Sunday
The motoring mysteries Life On Cars still needs to solve
So it’s probably passed you by that today marks four years since Life On Cars choked into cyberspace for the first time. Since then, this blog – and the sister newspaper column in The Champion – have gone on a high octane journey through a world of car shows, reviews and test drives, taking in a few broken down Minis and sunburnt afternoons along the way.
However, there are a few questions which – despite having a finger on the pulse of all matters motoring since 2009 – still haven’t been answered. Niggling issues and unsolved mysteries, such as…
Does The Audi Lane actually exist?
The more I drive on motorways, the more I’m convinced the outer lane has – perhaps through the signing of a secret EU protocol at a summit in deepest Ingolstadt – been reserved exclusively for cars with four rings on the radiator grille. Whether you’re in an entry-level A1 or a thumping A7 V12 TDI, your 95mph entrance into The Audi Lane is politely welcomed. Daring to venture there, however, in anything other than an Audi seems to result in the image above dominating your rear view mirror…
Can I get Allegrodote into the motoring lexicon?
An Allegrodote, in case you missed the article earlier this year, is an anecdote solely covering the Austin Allegro, particularly if it’s one that isn’t true. With BL’s great hatchback hope itself celebrating its fortieth birthday, it’d be great to see whether the car which inspires more urban myths than any other could be given its own special term to mark the anniversary.
Is the Renault Clio the most sensible secondhand car ever?
It struck me earlier today that almost everyone I know seems to have an owned a second generation Renault Clio, made by the French firm between 1998 and 2006. Whether it’s the 1.5DCI diesel – of £30 a year road tax fame – or the strikingly quick Renaultsport Clio 172, they do seem to reflect frankly ridiculous value for money. Which is why, I suspect, most of my mates have got one.
Why do cheeseburgers at car shows always cost £5.50?
This one I’ve yet to understand – a cheeseburger at a car show, whether you’re in Dorset or Cheshire, Lancashire or Lanarkshire, almost always costs £5.50, making me suspect there’s some sort of layby-based cabal somewhere determining the price. That is, of course, with the exception of the Goodwood Festival of Speed, which when I visited earlier this year marked itself out as a car show of a higher calibre. This, I think, explains the £8 you paid for a burger there.
What will the next Fiat 500 spinoff be?
We’ve already had the 500C, the Abarth, the hideous 500L, the even more hideous 500L MPW and now the frankly unbearable 500L Tracking. Chances are that by this time next year you’ll be able to buy a 500 Roadster, a 500XXL Fire Engine, a 500 Beach Buggy and perhaps a 500 Submarine. All of which will be worth £500 in a used car auction near you in the not-too-distant future.
Can you go green-laning in an electric car?
I was wondering this earlier today when I’d stopped laughing at the Hummer electric car a UK design firm has come up with. Land Rover came up with an electric Defender earlier this year, but I am left wondering what would happen to an electric 4X4 if, for instance, you took it wading through a river in the Cumbrian countryside. Potentially, the results could be shocking…
Why are Peugeot interiors always messy?
An old colleague of mine got so cross when I put this particular pet theory across that the column I’d been planning for that week got quietly canned, for offending owners of 307s everywhere. It does, however, leave the ongoing mystery as to why so many unloved car interiors I’ve seen are in Peugeots, from a 406 Estate practically blacked by cigarette smoke, the 407 with Seventies-esque disco lighting on account of its numerous technical warnings, and a 206 lined with old McDonalds bags and a distinct whiff of vomit, even though it was barely a year old at the time.
Do ‘GB’ plates make you motor look more modern?
A mate of mine put this to me today and – annoyingly – he’s absolutely right, although I’m not entirely sure why. All afternoon I’ve been checking out whether cars have the telltale EU blue strip at the side of the numberplate, and determined that all the cars that do somehow look newer than otherwise identical ones which don’t. Weird, but true.
Why are all classic cars described online as ‘BRAN FIND’?
Genuine classics which are in ‘barn find’ condition are worth a fortune – witness, for instance, the E-Type which sold at auction for £109,000 after spending most of its life hidden away in the aforementioned agricultural building. However, that doesn’t excuse clumsy eBay sellers flogging any old tat as a ‘barn find’, inadvertently mis-spelling it as ‘BRAN FIND’ in the process. In the world of crap secondhand buys, any car of any age or merit can be described as ‘BRAN FIND’ if it's spent even a short of amount of time in a garage or other building.
Will my MGB GT ever be finished?
Speaking of which, my MGB – which actually did spend a decade of its life in a barn – has over the past three of Life On Cars’ four years kept me busy with visits to shows and appearances in the pages of Classic Car Weekly. While it’s had a small fortune spent on it there are many, many jobs it could still benefit from – least of all, a proper tune up after its latest excursion made it sound like a cement mixer with a cold. I wager, though, that it’s the automotive equivalent of painting the Forth Bridge. Maybe it’s a job that’s never meant to get finished…
Life On Cars thanks both of its readers for all their support over the past four years
Friday
Why I'm looking forward to the Woodvale Transport Festival
The Woodvale Transport Festival - the newly rebranded Woodvale Rally – takes place in Victoria Park in the seaside resort, and will be welcoming enthusiasts from across the North West from 10am on both Saturday and Sunday, with admission for adults costing £5.
I’ll be there too, donning my best Classic Car Weekly-branded jacket and taking pictures aplenty of owners proudly showing off their old Triumphs, MGs and so on. So far I’ve already been to a smorgasbord of shows for CCW, including the Bristol Classic Car Show, Manchester’s Passion for Power, the Donington Historic Festival and most recently the Cholmondeley Pageant of Power, so what made me so keen to make the journey to a much smaller show, held in a park in a northern seaside resort?
Put simply; it’s my home show, and the one I can remember going to for as long as I can remember.
One of the earliest existing photographs of me involves me standing next to an E-type at the Woodvale Rally, as a pre-pubescent car nut who wandered around the airfield with his dad. Then I spent years litter-picking with the scouts, followed by a stint of helping Mr Simister Senior with the displays at the Red Rose Land Rover Club, and then finally the day came when I could start showing off my own classics at the show. It’s also the first show of any kind where I’ve displayed my own classic, when my old Mini coughed into the venue way back in 2009.
I don’t think it’s unfair to say the show’s had its ups and downs over the past couple of years, but I can’t wait to see what the organisers are going to do with this year’s event. A change of name, a change of price, and a venue, don’t forget, that hosts one of the country’s best known flower shows.
Can’t wait!
Keep an eye out for David’s report on the Woodvale Transport Festival in Classic Car Weekly.
Sunday
Cholmondeley Pageant of Power 2013
It’s that wonderful time of year when the sun tries its best to break through the cloud, scores of mouthwatering motors emerge from hibernation, and enterprising petrolheads bring them all together in fields and parks across the north west. It is, if you’re really into wandering around looking at automotive exotica, entirely possible to end up at a car show every single weekend because there’s so many of them across the north west, to the point where you have to start being picky about which ones you go to!
The Cholmondeley Pageant of Power, however, is one I’ll always put down in my diary, because it’s a bombardment to the automotive senses. If you haven’t been – and you should, because it’s only an hour away in the car, in the greener bits of deepest Cheshire – then you’re missing out on a treat. In a nutshell, it involves taking over the grounds of a stately home, turning it into a sort of improvised racetrack and then setting off some of the world’s most exciting cars around it to see how fast they can go. Not only can you get up close to Ferraris and Bugattis and scary Group B rally cars, but you can watch them burning rubber and going flat out too.
I tried totting up the value of the various bits of automotive exotica parked up in the paddock but I lost count when I got to the trio of Le Mans-winning Bentleys – and instead just immersed myself in how stunning these bits of motoring beauty were. I’d try and listen to the loudspeakers for more information for the commentators, but every 30 seconds or so he’d be drowned out by the sound of a Ford GT40 roaring past. Then, if you trapsed past the food stalls and hunted down the rally sections, you could decide whether you’d prefer a Ford Escort RS1800 or a Group B Audi Quattro in your dream garage!
The spectacle of seeing, hearing and even smelling these incredible machines makes the Pageant of Power of what it is, and it was great that thousand of people were enjoying it alongside me, even when it was chucking it down with rain. If you managed to make it to Cholmondeley last weekend, you’ll know why I rate it as one of the best motoring events not just in the north west, but in the whole country. If you didn’t, make sure you jot the dates of next year’s event down in your diary.
It really is that good.
For more pictures and a full report from the event, check out Classic Car Weekly on Wednesday, June 19.