A Classic Tapas in Valencia

With the Northern European Racing season not really started yet our roving reporter visited Racing Legends in Spain – join him:

As a result of extensive house renovations we decided to move out for a couple of months to leave the builders to it, and chose the city of Valencia (or to be more precise, the neighbouring suburb of Alboraia) as a base for most of the months of February and March.

Since my other half can work from anywhere, and I’m retired, all that we need is a place with reliable broadband, which we found at the northern end of one of Valencia’s glorious beaches. The weather – while not as warm and sunny as further south – is nevertheless milder than in the UK, and the city itself has much to offer culturally and for sport.

One of those offerings can be found about 25km west of the city in the form of the Circuit de la Comunitat Valenciana Ricardo Tormo, to give it it’s full name, which was inaugurated on September 19th, 1999. The concept behind it is “a circuit within a stadium”, meaning it has been built in such a way that spectators can see pretty much the entire track from any of the 65,000 permanent seats – increased to 120,000 for the season-ending MotoGP race each November.

Now I know nothing about the Spanish classic scene, and the only Spanish marques that I can bring to mind are Pegaso, Hispano-Suiza and of course SEAT. The first two – both very exclusive, even more so today – are long defunct; the latter is of course still with us today, having originally been a partnership that included FIAT and from 1986, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Volkswagen Group.

Yet despite having only one home-grown mass car manufacturer, until very recently Spain built more cars than any other country in Europe except Germany. As has been the case in the UK for some years now, most of these were built for other manufacturers such as Ford (the Fiesta was in fact built in Valencia for many years), Renault, Nissan and GM.

So I wasn’t sure what to expect when I parked up at the circuit on a bright and sunny Saturday morning and was ready to be surprised – and I was, several times. The first thing to remark on is that the circuit is superb – it really is contained within a series of huge grandstands and from the pits straight where I was, you could see pretty much every bend and straight of this undulating track.

I have to say that the track action itself was of limited interest – to me, at least. Bikes took up half the time and while I enjoy watching modern MotoGP racing, the historic stuff didn’t really do it for me, while the historic racing cars were a very mixed bag, none of them familiar to me, but that’s down to my own ignorance, of course. The most interesting cars to make it out onto the track were the 53 road cars entered into the regularity event, but while this is a difficult and demanding event for participants, watching a load of cars effectively trundling around the track doesn’t make for a great spectacle.

There was considerable variety within that 53, including a UK-registered Triumph Dolomite Sprint, a gaggle of BMW’s, SEAT’s, a pair of Opel GT’s, one of which was heavily “aero’d”, Porsche’s, Alfa’s and more.

Being in Spain meant that all the “FIAT”s were of course SEAT’s, and while they were mostly cars we would consider to be FIAT’s but wearing SEAT badges, there was one particular exception – a white SEAT 1200 Sport, a car I hadn’t seen before. Built between 1975 and ’79, this was the first SEAT developed entirely by the company, though the body design was purchased from NSU. It reminded me a little of the FIAT 128P, though the front is a little heavy-handed.

Other SEAT versions of FIAT’s that would be familiar to us in the UK and other European markets included a couple of the very pretty Bertone designed and built 850 Spider and a trio of the stylish 850 coupés, as well as the 850 2-door saloon, but the booted Especial 4-door saloon was a Spanish-only car.

There was a strong turnout from the local BMW club, including several E30’s and a trio of handsome 6-series coupés, and more unusually, a pair of E23 7-series, one a 728i, the other a 735i. Elsewhere there was a very tidy 2002 in a dark metallic – I’m rubbish with colours, any assistance welcome!

The Renault Fuego was marketed in the UK almost solely on the basis of its good looks – the tag line I remember was “My name is Fuego”, as if it were some sultry screen siren. It’s OK, though I actually prefer its predecessors, the 15 and 17. There are fewer than 20 on the roads in the UK now, but there were at least a dozen at this event – more than I think I’ve seen in total over the last decade. No doubt this is due in large part to the fact Fuego’s were built in Spain (among other countries), and the local Renault Fuego Club is clearly a thriving group.

While there weren’t as many US cars as you might expect at a UK event, there was a healthy number on show nevertheless. Among them a line of four Corvettes, including an early C2 roadster made a strong impression, and I particularly liked the early yellow T-Bird and metallic gold Mercury Cougar, as well as the imposing purple Chevrolet Chevelle, which rumbled menacingly onto the parking lot.

The metallic silver Dodge 3700GT that rolled in looked like, well, a regular Dodge, and while I thought it looked pretty cool, I thought no more of it until I started to write this piece. Intriguingly, it transpires that the 3700GT was an upgraded Dodge Dart built, or more precisely, adapted, following a deal with Chrysler in 1965, by Spanish truck maker Barreiros, who gave the car a more luxurious interior among other things. Apparently a little under 18,000 Barreiros Darts were built in total, in three variants including our 3700GT and these were the biggest, most luxurious cars made in Spain at the time. You live and learn!

One more Spanish market car – this time, one I was at least slightly familiar with – was the orange Austin Victoria. Built in South Africa and marketed as the Austin Apache, these ADO16-based cars were designed by Michelotti and built by Authi in Pamplona between 1972 and 1975. These are neat little cars, incorporating elements of the Triumph Dolomite and Toledo as well as the larger 2000 and 2500.

There was a fine collection of Citroëns on display, ranging from the humble 2CV and Ami 8 through four Light 15’s (these always seem to be black ) to a CX 25 TRD Turbo 2 (according to the badge on the back), but my curiosity was particularly piqued by the quartet of GS’s on show, including a GS Palas (Pallas elsewhere, but in Spain this would have been pronounced “pay-as”, hence Palas), a car I have fond memories of as my father ran a chocolate brown metallic Pallas back in the late ‘70s.

Some 300,000 UK expats live in Spain, so it was no surprise that there was a car club with a strong UK flavour (in membership terms) from Marina Alta, in the southern part of the Valencia Comunitat. Indeed, one of their members was in the Dolly Sprint taking part in the regularity. Since my Spanish has improved not one iota since I got here, it was good to be able to converse with some English-speaking classic enthusiasts. Among their group was a superb white 1965 Mercedes Fintail 220Seb – still on its Regensburg, Germany plates – and a gorgeous red Alfa Romeo Montreal, as well as a trio of E-types; a nice eclectic selection.

I could go on, as there were many more cool classics arrayed around the venue – instead, please check out and enjoy the gallery below.