Letter from London November 2011
W inter is rapidly approaching in the Northern hemisphere and while we are yet to experience any truly wet and stormy winter weather in and around London, the days are notably shorter, with it getting dark by 4.30pm in the afternoon, which is a bit depressing when you go to work and come home again in the dark! All this means that the outdoor motoring events have just about ceased, but the indoor shows have started up. To that effect, we’ve travelled to Padua in Italy to take in the annual Auto Moto d’Epoca event and at the other extreme, driven to the National Exhibition Centre in Birmingham for the Classic Car Show – oh and we fitted in a side trip to Istanbul for a weekend as well – one of the advantages of a London base…
We’ve also managed to fit in visits to the BBC Television Centre for a tour and also the filming of a couple of TV programmes, which was an interesting experience, seeing how they look in real life. However, that’s not part of the subject matter for here!
Getting back to motoring, we acquired tickets for a charity dinner held in the Clubrooms of the British Racing Drivers Club at Silverstone in mid October, where the guest speaker was Damon Hill, interviewed by veteran motorsport journalist and writer, Alan Henry. Damon is a very good speaker, coming across as thoughtful, amusing and intelligent, as well as being a surprisingly good mimic! He has helped steer the BRDC through some turbulent times over the last couple of years in the role of Chairman as they dealt with a variety of issues and leaves it in a much improved position with a long term contract for the Grand Prix and a lot of good initiatives in place. It was a great evening.
The end of October saw us jet over to Italy for our first visit to Auto Moto d’Epoca, held in the large exhibition centre in Padua, about 50km inland from Venice. I suppose the best thing to compare it to in the UK is the Classic Car Show at the NEC, except with more Italian car stuff and better coffee and catering! But seriously, the show is one of the biggest in Italy, with 11 halls spread over the FierePadova exhibition centre with about 1200 exhibitors displaying or selling cars, parts and services to cover most aspects of the Classic Car world. Of course, the overwhelming theme is Italian, with a wide variety of vendors dealing in parts for Alfa Romeos, Fiats, Lancias and the like – and the cars to match, but I was also surprised to see a good number of German companies present with lots of Mercedes and Porsche parts and cars on show, as well as more English machinery that I thought there would be.
There were over 2500 cars on display, with more than half of them on sale, either via dealers or through the various areas set aside for private vendors. Despite the grim economic stories we’ve been hearing, I didn’t see many bargains on sale though. It seems that the Italians don’t plan to give anything away and (as expected) they are mostly keen to deal only in cash too. A lot of the parts vendors seemed to have collections of ‘New Old Stock’ parts for older Italian cars, but didn’t have websites, email or anything like that. If you decided that you wanted to buy a part that you had seen at the Show a few weeks later, you would be struggling to find out how to contact these people. It’s quite a different business style to what I’m used to from shows here in the UK, or even the big ones in Germany.
One of the dominant themes of the show was, of course, the ubiquitous old Fiat 500 – probably the backbone of the Classic Car scene in Italy. Aside from cars for sale, there were Club displays and lots of vendors dealing in restoration and tuning parts for these small classics. The 500 is just about the only old car you see in regular use in and around the cities of Italy, so it’s understandable that there is a big industry out there supplying parts for them. I was surprised to see the amount of stuff available for old Lancias of the 1940s to the 1960s (pre Fiat era). As well as plenty on display and for sale, a lot of the traders seemed to have parts available for them as well. Of course there were plenty of Alfa Romeo cars and parts available too, which I spent lots of time poring over, much to Kelly’s annoyance. She is very tolerant, but even she can only take a couple of hours of looking at tables of headlights, trim pieces, tail lights, mechanical parts and things like that! I took a few general shots of the cars parts available which you can see here:
https://picasaweb.google.com/113151683494175164784/AutoMotoDEpocaCarPartsShots02
Overall we enjoyed the show. It has a more disorganised atmosphere than the big German events, and there are some mildly frustrating aspects to the way it’s arranged (has no one in Italy ever heard of logistics and event planning ???), but there is an interesting and different array of vehicles on show and we had fun taking it all in. If you don’t have much Italian language, it can be a bit of a challenge at times, trying to work out how things are done, but generally you can muddle through most stuff. We will go back there again in the next couple of years, once we plan out our future calendar of events.
There are shots of the general car displays for the show here:
https://picasaweb.google.com/113151683494175164784/AutoMotoDEpocaShow
After two days at the show (Friday and Saturday) we took time out on Sunday and Monday to travel around the area a little – never having been to that part of Italy before. We took our little Lancia Ypsilon 1.2 Ego hire car for a lap of Lake Garda to see what it was like. Unfortunately the spectacular views were a little spoilt by occasional banks of fog over the Lake, but we still had an enjoyable day out. We also visited Verona and took in the tourist trap that is the ‘Casa Giulietta’ of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet fame, drove past the large Maserati edifice on the outskirts of Modena, the Magneti Marelli/Weber factory in Bologna and got annoyed at the still prevalent habit in places of shops shutting for lunch for 2-3 hours in the middle of the day! I wonder how people who work in those shops ever get to do any shopping themselves. No wonder they have economic troubles…
If you are into older Italian cars I would recommend the show, as you will see lots of machines and parts that will be of interest to you. It’s large and you will need at least a day and a half to see around everything properly, but you will be surprised at the range and variety of things on show. Just don’t expect any bargains and if you are shopping for something specific, make sure you have plenty of Euros on hand!
As a counterpoint to the Italian style of shows, a fortnight later we headed 100 or so miles up the motorway to the National Exhibition Centre near Birmingham to take in the annual NEC Classic Car Show. This event is on a broadly similar scale to the Padua show, but probably has more Car Club displays and less manufacturer involvement.
One of the things that I find interesting about the UK shows is the enthusiasm that a surprising number of Brits show for cars that could be considered in most circles to be ‘lost causes’. The Morris Marina is the obvious butt of many jokes in that regard, but there are a whole subculture of people who cherish and maintain Austin Allegros, Mk 3 Ford Cortinas, Sunbeam/Talbot/Chrysler Avengers, Mini Metros and the ilk, with no regard to the economic consequences of having to store, maintain, insure and use such a thing. You have to admire such devotion to what many of us would consider the low points of British motoring history.
Of course the Show is also about ‘high end’ cars as well, with excellent displays from the Ferrari, Maserati, Aston Martin, Bugatti, Rolls Royce and other such Marque clubs. Plenty of dealers are on hand too, usually asking quite extravagant prices for some of their stock, but I did notice on the Sunday of the Show that there were quite a few ‘Sold’signs about, so there is certainly money around for the right machines. There are also a lot of trade stands with companies dealing in all sorts of parts and services for the Classic Car world. The scene in the UK seems to have been surprisingly ‘recession proof’ compared to other parts of the local economy, with values of cars seeming to be holding up (and increasing in some circumstances) as people are looking for some return on their money that would otherwise be eroded by inflation if they kept it in the bank. This means that parts dealers and restorers of Classic Cars all seem to be quite busy, which is a bit of a contrast to the people dealing in new and near new cars, who often seem to be struggling in the current economic climate. There are some photos of the Show here:
https://picasaweb.google.com/113151683494175164784/NECClassicCarShow2011
As we head up to Christmas the scene slows down a lot here, with only a couple of Auctions and small events on. The next big outing will be the various New Years Day events where we all wrap up warm and trek out to various pubs and venues around the country to welcome in the New Year. The last couple of years have been cold, but clear and dry. Hopefully it will be the same for 2012. Have a great Christmas and New Year and I’ll be back in the New Year to update you on more motoring events. Kelly and I are planning the calendar for 2012 already!