A Grand Day Out at Pistonheads Annual Service

They’ve come a looong way, Pistonheads – also out in the physical world. IRL, as they’d probably say.

Originally an online forum for motoring enthusiasts to meet and share their interest in all things car related, Pistonheads has expanded since its founding in 1998 to become the UK’s biggest online motoring community. It’s now owned by Boston-based CarGurus.

Pistonheads Annual Service was established just three years ago to mark its 25^th anniversary and has already become a major fixture in the UK motoring calender, selling 7,000 tickets and taking over the entire Bicester Motion (previously Bicester Heritage) site and while not purely a classic car event, classics played a significant part in the day’s proceedings.

The event embraces the entire motoring movement – modern, classic, modified, sports and supercars, resulting in a huge variety of cars both in the curated areas and in the visitors’ car park – in fact I spent over an hour there before I entered the main site, so let’s start there.

Visitors brought some astonishing cars with them, including dozens of Porsches, Ferraris, Astons, McLarens, Lamborghinis and so on. While many of these were modern, there were some lovely classics in there as well – and one or two surprises.

Among the classic exotica, a couple of Ferrari Testarossas caught my eye as well as a pistachio 1973 De Tomaso Pantera, a brutal 1985 Audi Sport Quattro and a gorgeous 1968 Aston Martin DB6 Volante in gold and with a For Sale notice suggesting that £480,000 or thereabouts would be enough to buy it.

A completely new car to me and perhaps the single most intriguing car of the day was what looked at first like a Gordon Keeble that had shrunk in the car wash, but in fact was a Walker Elan GT, a one-off built in 1965 by Ian Walker Racing for a Swiss businessman on an Elan platform but looking nothing like the Lotus Elan itself. The aluminium body was put together by Williams & Pritchard, the interior by Harold Radford Ltd. It was a treat to see it, just parked randomly in among the visitor cars. It demonstrated once again that even after attending probably scores of events, one can still be surprised. Other favourites in the car park included a superb Alfa Romeo “Duetto” in white, a fine 1973 Hillman Avenger Tiger and among all the sports and supercars, a cheerful 1979 Citroën Dyane.

Heading into the main site there were significant club displays from Porsche, Alpine, Lotus, BMW, Mercedes and in particular, the Lotus Seven and Caterham Club who put on a splendid display arranged by colour.  Again, most of the club cars were modern, but a few classics found their way in, too, including a fabulous BMW M1, a pair of E9’s including a rarely seen 2800CS, and a couple of Alpine that were not modern A110’s…

In among the curated displays, there were some beauties on the Classics lawn – some brought in by dealers, but no less welcome for that. The beautiful 1967 Ferrari 330GTC stood out, as did its Maranello stablemate, the always dramatic 365GTB/4 or “Daytona”. I also loved the gold ’79 BMW 633CSi (though I would have changed the wheels), as well as the lovely red Lotus Elite, still the prettiest car to ever come out of Hethel in my view.

With regard to the Modern Classics – I’m not sure what the organisers’ start point was but if we go for between 20 and 30 years old, there were several examples of the Lotus Elise and Exige, Honda S2000, Audi TT, Ford’s small Puma coupé, the BMW Z3 and others. Interestingly, nearly all sports or performance cars – coincidence?

Among all the sports and performance cars there were a few everyday heroes from the past scattered around the car park and the main site – I’ve already mentioned the Citroën Dyane, but there was a nice British trio of a Triumph Herald 13/60, MGB Roadster and Morris 1000, the latter in saloon and Traveller form, and tucked away almost out of site, a well-used Humber Super Snipe estate as well as a VW Type 3 Estate.

There were also numerous Japanese classics in both the car park and on the main site, both old-and-youngtimers, particularly various Nissan Skyline/GTR’s – to my eyes the earlier ones look better than their more brutish modern counterparts, but that’s just my opinion, obviously. I do love to see a Honda NSX, and at the other extreme, the tiny S800.

As for the Future Classics – well, predicting those is a game we all probably play occasionally. Again, they were mostly sports cars but despite that it’s almost certain that the “new” Alpine A110, the Porsche Cayman and later 911s, Jaguar F-type are all going to become future classics. Not sure I can think of many current saloon or family cars that we will look at in the same way we do a ‘70’s or ‘80’s BMW 3 or 5 series, Peugeot 505 or a Jaguar XJ6?

Largely missing from the overall mix were pre-1950s cars, but other than that, the varied nature of the cars was reflected in the wider visitor demographic than you would expect at a classics-only event, and there was enough of everything to satisfy all but perhaps the most demanding. There were numerous young people, and I like to think that for many, this type of “all inclusive” event might act as a gateway into the classic world and perhaps inject some fresh blood into our hobby. In any case, I enjoyed the day very much and will definitely be back next year.