THEY were the boring cars we loved to hate.
But amazingly the worst motors of the worst era in British
motoring are now adored.
This week more than 4,000 long-forgotten horrors like the Morris
Marina, Austin Maxi, Allegro, Triumph Acclaim, Datsun Cherry and Lada Riva were honoured in a unique hurrah for the humdrum.
Appropriately named Grimsthorpe Castle in Lincolnshire was the
venue for the 10th anniversary Festival of the Unexceptional.
At a time when many car shows are struggling, this time capsule of the mundane has captured the public’s imagination and become
a roaring success.
Festival chief judge Danny Hopkins says: “It’s in the DNA of Britishness to celebrate and elevate the ordinary. These are classic cars, not the ones that were on your bedroom wall when you were a teenager.
“But the cars that were on your parents’ drive. Or your grandparents’ drive. Or your drive when you were younger. They’re the unremarkable cars that we all remember.
“The cars that we broke down in. The cars we passed our tests in. The cars that we brought our kids home from hospital in.”
Ten years ago, just 35 cars – including half a dozen Austin Allegros, a Vauxhall Chevette and a Renault 6 – turned up at the debut festival of unremarkable and unreliable cars from 1969 to ’99.
The first-ever winner was a 1984 Nissan Cherry GTi – the only one
still in the UK- with a 1975 Austin Maxi as runner-up.
The following year only 50 cars were there, including the Best in
Show a 1978 Ford Escort 1600 and a 1974 Hillman Avenger Super
Estate took the People’s Choice award.
By last year the proud owners of over 3,000 bog-standard motors
took part. The judges awarded a 1991 Diahatsu Applause the top
prize – a mug of tea.
And last weekend a 1982 Toyota Hilux pick-up that worked on a
strawberry farm took first place ahead of a bottom-of-the-range
1998 Renault Clio.
Posh Goodwood has a Festival of Speed for racing cars through the
ages and Lake Como boasts the Concorso d’Eleganza to show off
supercars costing millions.
But at the Festival of the Unexceptional, salesmen’s saloons, family motors and not-so-hot hatchbacks, including a Nissan Laurel Estate, a Vauxhall Nova saloon and a Yugo 45, fight it out in the Concours de l’Ordinare.
After looking at all the cars on display a team judges sits on a tartan rug drinking cups of tea and devouring custard creams to
pick the best of the worst.
Judge Danny, 54, says: “These cars were often built down to a price, so they weren’t the most reliable vehicles. You had a love-hate relationship with them.
“Everyone who drove in the 1970s can empathise with the vision of Basil Fawlty smacking an Austin 1300 with a piece of tree.”
Adam Sloman, UK events manager for the show’s sponsors, classic car insurers Hagerty, says: “Nostalgia is a hell of a drug. My first car was a 998cc Mini City with brown vinyl seats.
“We all have a connection to the cars that come to the Festival of the Unexceptional. Also, the barrier to entry is really low. You can get a really good car for £500.”
They were the world’s sh**tiest off-roader and now they have all but disappeared. They are an exclusive club
Danny Hopkins
While most festivals champion top-of-the-range motors, here bog standard basic models are cherished.
Adam says: “We had a guy last year who had an Austin Metro and he actually took out all of the extras that been added. He replaced them with the original blanking plugs because the car wouldn’t have had these things as new.
“Then he had a display on his rear parcel shelf of all the upgrades that he’d removed to bring it back to its poverty spec.
“I’m fiercely proud of British Leyland and Austin Rover. It’s great to see all the cars that came out of the Longbridge plant being cared for and given some love and attention.”
Best in show winners of the Festival of the Unexceptional
Many of the mundane motors at the Festival of the Unexceptional are the last ones left on the road because once these work-horse cars stopped being useful, they ended up in the scrapyard.
Of the 205,283 Austin Montegos in 1995 just 34 remain today. Out of 231,824 Austin Maestros only 90 are left.
And, according to DVLA data, only 289 of the 572,974 Austin Metros built are still being driven.
In the ‘70s and ‘80s the French-made Renault 14 was very common, but now there are only three left on the road in the UK and are rarer than a Lamborghini Countach from the same era.
Jon Coupland, 33, owns the only 1989 Proton 1.5GL Black Knight saloon left in Britain.
The car was made in Malaysia and had seats stuffed with coconut husks. Only 201 of them were made – one for each Proton dealership in the UK.
Jon, a Lincolnshire detective, says: “It has been confirmed by DVLA and Proton that all the rest have been scrapped.”
He found the car – with just 3,600 miles on the clock – in a garage
where the owner had kept it untouched for more than 30 years.
He entered it in the 2020 festival, which was cancelled because of
Covid but he won top prize the following year.
Jon says: “Give me something that’s quite quaint and boring over
a supercar any day. I get excited when I see a Perodua Kelisa, which at £5,000 was once the cheapest new car in Britain, rather than a Lotus XL.
“The event is a whole host of like-minded people coming together
to enjoy cars that don’t normally get the spotlight.”
Judge Danny Hopkins, 54, editor of Practical Classics magazine,
says he would walk past a line of James Bond’s favourite Aston
Martin DB5s to sit in a Talbot-Matro Rancho.
He says: “They were the world’s sh**tiest off-roader and now they have all but disappeared. They are an exclusive club.”
At the Festival on the Unexceptional, lots people want to sit in the
cars and sniff that aroma of warm vinyl and glue.
Danny, whose first car was a Morris Marina 1.3L, says: “You can put me in a car with a blindfold on and I can tell you what it is by
the smell alone.
“Every manufacturer used different types of vinyl and glue, so each
car has a slightly distinctive whiff. Those memories are they’re imprinted on us because we sat in those cars forever, in traffic jams on the way to Cornwall.
“These days, we live in a super-efficient, super-reliable world. But
are we any happier? I don’t think we are. The ability to get through the struggles that we used to have to contend with made us happier in a funny way.
“That’s why people love this festival – it’s a celebration of
imperfection.”
Here are some of the great makers of unexceptional motors who are no longer in business, and the last cars they produced
