Every year I swear I'm not going to go to the Bromley Pageant again. There's much not to like about it... the ridiculous mud track and un-mown precipitous field that pass as public parking... the cynical way exhibitors seem to be priced out of the show (your car gets in for free if you're showing, but you have to pay. Eh?)... the fact it claims to be the largest one-day car show in Europe, but there are four people selling entrance tickets, resulting in half-hour queues. Seriously? Come on... it has the most ignorant general public in the entire known universe, who will not only blunder into your carefully-composed and setup photograph but then see what you're doing and still stand right in the &%£#@ing way and have a chat with Ethel and Mabel about the price of Hobnobs in Aldis these days...
....then I realise it's only an hour away, there are fairground rides for the kids, a display arena with loads of cool vehicles from all genres displaying, hundreds of club and marque stands, brownie points from the wife for a family day out that pleases all of us, opportunity to see lots of rare and esoteric oddities...
...and so off we went.
First thing to arouse me... sorry, arouse my interest, was right inside the entrance gate (once we'd queued for the requisite half-hour to get to one of the three ticket sellers. Well, it was partially my fault, I did let an older couple go in front so that cost us another couple of minutes. It was cos they were downwind of my cigarette, so it seemed only fair not to blow smoke over them. The old boy was very pleasant, said smoke made him feel sick and then proceeded to explain about how he'd smoked forty a day himself for forty years, but didn't miss it at all now. Like, really? Sanctimonious much? Being the kindly, positive soul I am, I let them in front rather than suggest since I was actually in one of the few places in this thought-controlled legislative sledgehammer of a country where I could actually still legally smoke perhaps he might like to just &%$#@ing do one if he didn't like it. But I digress...) a pretty unusual example of GM's American muscle;
An Oldsmobile Toronado. No, that's not a misspelling. They made it up to sound cool and fast and stuff.
Funky ol' thing ain't it? Lots of firsts on this, first GM subframed car, first front-wheel drive mainstream American car since the '37 Cord, first Hy-Vo driven separate torque convertor setup, first front torsion bar suspension for GM. Oh, and first car to have wheelarches for thirty-inch wheels... but only thirteen inch wheels
The dash is a masterpiece of sideways thinking. I like the vertical scrolling speedo. All good stuff, different just for the sake of it. Which you gotta respect
Funky. Not something you often see. You quite often see one of these, and that's a good thing. Jensen owners club always represent well here, so here's an Interceptor picked at random from several purely cos I liked the colour
There was a very bizarre and eclectic selection just inside the gate, seemed to just be random one-offs that had parked up there. Which meant you could see things like this
I think this is an Austin A70 Hereford, van bodied? I stand...well, sit... to be corrected on that one, my knowledge of Austins from the days of black and white is sketchy I'm afraid. Funky as hell, whatever it is, and for sale should you need an incredibly slow delivery van
And then next door is this;
....I could tell you what it is, but I suspect that's somewhat unnecessary, lol. Marvellous panel pinstriping, makes it look like it's made of 1970's kitchen units. But in a good way
Everyone loves a nicely-presented RS Turbo don't they?
And this is a very nicely presented one, perfect in chrome and alloy and Samco blue all surrounded by Essex Stiletto White perfection
Moggy! Convertible Moggies always look a bit like they were modified in a shed by a man with elbow patches on his cardigan and a selection of awls arranged on the wall in perfect order, with outlines drawn round them. Possibly it was. Mind you, elbow patches are back in now anyway. Who'd have thought. Coming next... pipes and handlebar moustaches make a comeback
In actual fact, that image is pretty much a microcosm for the whole of Austin in my world. Enamel? Why would we enamel an emblem when good old fashioned paint will do just as well for a fraction the price? Thrift, lad, that's the way to build cars. Thrift! None of this how-d'yer-do opulence and newfangled comfortableness and that
Club Scuderia seems to be, perhaps not surprisingly, all about Ferraris
Modern Fezzas tend to only excite me in the abstract, that is; the details, the engineering, the ability, the statistics, all these things get me moist. But overall, the actual cars themselves? Not so much. No cohesion in design whatsoever, just a random collection of lines and swoops. Thus I often find I have loads of photos of small details on the car and none of the actual car. That's why I started with the F430, even though it's hideous
....cut it up into little pieces like this it becomes as aesthetically appealing as it's stat sheet is technically overwhelming
I think we need a return to the days when car design was the work of one man, usually an egomaniac high on their own importance to the level of delusional insanity. Only then are truly genius and iconic cars drawn up. All this drawn by committee, emasculated by bean counter, desecrated by elf and safe tea legislation neutering of car artistry has to stop. NOW! Here's a 599 as if to illustrate the point...
See? Nice in the detail, though, innit? Not saying I wouldn't have one, like, you understand... especially like the way the wing vent is modelled on the RX-7. Lol
Carboceramic brakes redefine the cliche archetype of "reassuringly expensive"
For some unaccountable reason I prefer the spider F430 to the Hardtop. I guess maybe because if a car is going to be made to appeal to menopausal bankers trying to compensate for... well for pretty much everything except the money, really... they might as well go the whole hog and not even pretend it's supposed to be driven like a sportscar
Maybe I'm just a twisted old cynic. OK, I am a twisted old cynic. It doesn't make me wrong though. Anyway, this is nicer. This calmed me down a bit
But this, now this is what Ferraris look like. Real ones, not the ephemeral status-defining tinsel of today
As far as I'm concerned, there are three sorts of Fezza. One is the GTO, Lusso, 275 sorta thing that was around before me and therefore I'm aware of how massively cool and iconic they are but are somewhat isolated by the ludicrous rarity and expense. Then there's the modern ones, since say the F40, which as we've established are nasty, largely irrelevant overpriced willy-enhancers for people with more money than charm or imagination. Then there are the ones that used to make you WIN at Top Trumps when I was a kid. And those, clearly, are close to being the coolest things on the planet. This 308GTB is pretty much some kind of acme and is the shape Ferraris will always be in my murky brain, just like Velociraptors are the exact shape any kid will doodle if told to draw a dinosaur
Even better from a distance with a bit of zany skew thrown in. Just to prove I'm, like, a bit crazy, man. Or actually quite bad at photoz, not sure which
Strangely, there was a blue-collar American interloper amongst all the Ferraris. This Ford GT kinda proves my point about hollisitic controlled design, really. If the best Ford can do in the 21st Century is emulate a fifty year old shape, then there's definitely a case for the Campaign for One-Man Car Design.
Startling how much more humongous this new iteration is than a "real" original one. Guess that's true for all cars though, my old MkI Golf is now smaller than a new Polo. Well, it would be, we scrapped it years ago, but you know what I mean.
