Rolls in the couintry

Rolls in the country

With the classic car show season well underway this weekend my girlfriend and I went to the Burland Hall show, an event organised to raise money for a local hospice. Good stuff, top hole and all that.
I love old cars, old bikes, new cars and new bikes, basically anything with an engine this side of a tractor, so partaking in anything that combines classic motoring with the fight against cancer can only be a good thing. Or so I thought. and this my dear reader brings me to my latest rant... the classic car owners' club.

Two weeks before the Burland show I was at the Crewe and Nantwich show. This small show, only in its' second year was a real laugh. The cars came in all shapes and sizes from concourse condition to those held together with rust and powered by the prayers of the owner. Nonetheless I anticipated no snobbery, but made a point of avoiding the MG Owners club. In the past I have learned that MG drivers on their own are fine, but groups of them have a dangerous crowd mentality whereby they claim to be the demi-gods of the classic car fraternity and pour scorn on all others. However, at the Crewe show I got chatting to the Triumph owners' club, or more accurately the president. I could have pointed out that Britain is a Morarchy led country so maybe he should be the Prime Minister but I didn't get the chance.
The President's opening barrage of fire was, and I quote;
"The Cortina was the biggest heap of shit ever made, you should do yourself a favour and scrap it" This seemed a less than friendly opening to the conversation and I rallied with the fact that I use my 'tina every day and although it breaks down every now and again, I can usually get it going in a couple of minutes. Added to this that the Cortina sold over 7 million units and was the best selling car in the UK for many years, maybe captain Triumph had got it wrong?
Unabashed he continued that if I was hell bent on keeping my Ford then I could improve it by fitting the engine from a Spitfire. For those not in the know on Triumphs of old, the Spitfire was a very pretty little sports car, based on the Herald with a different body and an extra carb. Yet it was backward even for its' time and the idea that I should remove the 'pinto' from my car and replace it with a wheezey old pushrod lump made no sense.

Actually, maybe I misunderstood him, maybe he meant an actual spitfire engine? Although I feel that trying to fit a 27 litre supercharged V12 Merlin might prove tricky, and running it past the insurance company could be problematic. But I do like the thought that if I were asked if there were any other modifications I could say I was thinking of fitting 6 Browning machine guns and a pair of .50 cal armour piercing cannons.
Still, this encounter got me thinking, it isn't the cars that are the problem, nor really is it the people that own them, it is the 'single make' owners' club. To understand this phenomonon further I drew on my limited knowedge of sport, namely football supporters. Like those who watch a game where overpaid, mentally sub-normal men kick a ball around a field there is a sense of commeradery, and with it comes the clothing. Footballists wear t-shirts and hats proclaiming their loyalty to their team, and the same applies to the owners' club. Also the 'mine's better than yours' attitude prevails, even when it is abundently clear that this is not the case, the case in point being replacing one of the most popular engines ever made with a leaky old crap case from a car company which ceased trading in the seventies.
Therefore as the Cortina rolled onto the grounds of Burland Hall on a sunny Sunday afternoon I was prepared for some mild idiocy.

The show was run on the usual poorly organised 'park it where you like' layout and my Crusader was marooned between a Standard Vanguard and a 1959 Bentley. As is the etiquette with these events I nodded to the drivers of both vehicles and was met with a cheery wave from the Standard and .... nothing... not anything at all from the Bentley driver.
At first I assumed that he had not seen me, so after alighting from the car I endevoured to say hello, yet this was also met with silence. The same was not true of his good lady wife who braved my peasant like greeting by making eye-contact and then breaking it with a swift swish of her nose. Next the Bentely driver decided to declare the field for the empire by planting a 15 foot flag pole in the ground and running up the Union Flag. Had we been in India or the West Indies in the 17th Century then maybe there would have been a smattering of logic, but we were in Cheshire, the North West of England and, as far as I am aware, one of the many places in Brittania where we are all too well aware that the queen reigns supreme and we don't like Johhny Bloody Foereigner. Naturally this didn't go down too well with my lovely lady, coming as she does from Northern Ireland the Union Flag evokes memories of what are laughingly known as 'the troubles' or to the rest on the world, a campaign of murder and terrorism perpetated by unemployed idiots with nothing better to do than wage war on what is essentially two stands of the same religion. Oh well, at least the Middle East is continuing the tradition.

As the morning rolled on (rolled, rolls royce, oh I crack myself up) many more members of the Rolls Royce and Bentely Motors Owners' club arrived. Now, before I go on I should make clear that I adore these cars. They hark back to the days when we could still hold our heads high, safe in the knowledge that 'the English are the best at everything' (Lord of the Flies) and we gave that Austrian upstart a damn good thrashing.

However, whilst walking through the assembled Rollers and Bentleys it transpired that the attitude of the '59 owner prevailed throuhout all of those who had brought Derby and Crewe's finest along to the show.

There was no possibility of engagement in conversation with anyone who was not one of the club, overheard conversations spoke of the majesty of their horseless carriages and all other motor cars were inferior, added to this the incredible racism of the average Turbo R driver left me bewildered, after all, in polite society we do not talk openly about 'wogs and darkies', no we make damn sure that no one else is listening!

After a couple of hours my girlfriend retired to the Cortina as I set off with my camera to make another facebook album and thus it was that I used the marvelous technology on my mobile telephone to find out the value of the massive cars used by the aforementioned club.

Before going on I should make clear that there is a definate reason for the Rolls Royce and Bentley owners' club being one and the same. You see for several decades they were the same company. If you wanted a Rolls Royce you bought a gigantic, overpriced car that was luxurious and not that well built. And if you wanted a Bentley you bought a gigantic, overpriced car that was luxuriuos and not that well built with stiffer suspension and a turbocharger nailed to the exhuast manifold.

I digress, what it boils down to is this, new Rollers and Bentleys are hugeley expensive and arguably the best cars money can buy, you can't include supercars because they need servicing every 2 miles and the Maybach is a streched Mercedes S-class that has been covered with prit stick and driven through Halfords, and then through a cut-price electronics retailer. Ture classics like the Phantom II of the 30's and the Silver Ghost are never seen at local car shows because the owners are either too rich to venture amoungst the proleteriate or have messed up on their expenses claims and are on their way to Mexico.

So, the value of the cars at the show were as follows; The top line cars would fetch in the region of 35k. A huge amount of money, yet to keep things in perspective this is roughly the price of a mid-range BMW 5-series, the type of car driven by a bloke called Barry who is a regional sales manager, selling TFT monitors in South Wales, and at the bottom end of the scale came the Silver Spirit drivers.

Everyone knows these cars, they are commonly seen at weddings, painted white and will only start when confetti is thrown at them. They began life in the service of the Marquis of somewhere and over the years have made their way down the social scale until they are owned by a bitter man in his 60's with ideas above his station.
The cost of a Silver Spirit (although oddly enough given the racist attitude of the owners they have the initials 'SS') ranges from 12k for a good 'un all the way down to one that was on ebay for four thousand pounds, but open to offers. This car was described as having a 'knocky bottom end', oh yeah I'd love to rebuild that.

Ergo, owning a knackered old Roller does not make you Lord and Master of all you survey. I would have taken this up with them but sadly they were not willing to talk with commoners.

This is unfortunate, because as I said at the beginning, I adore old motors. I would have mentioned this to the Classic Ford Owners' Club, but seeing that I have given up smoking and have no interest in football they are likely to shun me as well.

Should I sell my Cortina and relinquish all ideas of classic motoring? No, when the day was drawing to a close I lay half asleep in my reclined driver's seat whereupon a jolly fellow knocked on the window, awaking me from my slumber and said;
"Cortina.... fooking great mate"

I rest my case