Classic Motor Show looms!

Don’t forget to get along to the Classic Motor Show 2006 at the National Exhibition Centre, Birmingham, this weekend (October 27-29)!

Still the largest indoor classic show in Britain, thanks largely to the unpaid efforts of hundreds, if not thousands, of classic car club members: in fact for this year the organisers hope to have over 160 clubs displaying (even more applied) and a total of over 1000 classic cars on show – of which some will be for sale.

Other attractions include ‘dream rides’ for charity in cars as diverse as a 1930s Bugatti, a Ferrari Enzo, an Aston Martin DB9 and a Ford GT40.

In the Restoration Theatre, teams from Leeds College of Technology will be hard at work completing a Morris Minor restoration and launching into the restoration and modification of a Mini. Skills on show will include panel beating, wheeling, lead loading and welding.

On the Live Stage, TV stars Mark Evans and Mike Brewer will be giving restoration and buying advice, while an extensive autojumble is also promised.

I can remember debating a few years ago whether £10 was too much to pay for a classic car show – entry this year costs £12 on Saturday and Sunday (09.30-17.30) but a whopping £18 on Friday (10.00-18.00). It would be interesting to know how many people fork out the £18 – there’s some cachet to being the first to see new cars at the ‘proper’ Motor Show, enabling the organisers to charge a premium for the first public day, but is there really any cachet to being the first to see a classic car show? The only possible value is in picking up bargains at the autojumble – but it’s not really the sort of show where first-timers who might not know the value of their stock take autojumble stands (and if they did, fellow traders would buy them out on set-up day anyway!). More details on www.necmotorshow.com.