Danish Season Kicks Off at Copenhagen Citadel

Those springtime season starters are always a real event, as we all dust off our classics after a grim winter and get them back on the road. Parking up somewhere pleasant in the sun, meeting up with old friends and likeminded enthusiasts, and strolling around kicking tyres and admiring other’s fabulous classics always feels even better after a deprived winter.

Luckily for me, the Danish spring arrives just that little bit later than it does in the UK. So having just attended a few season starters here, I headed back home to Denmark just in time for a weekend with old friends – and of course the annual season starter held within the 17thcentury Copenhagen Citadel near the Langelinie Pier. Saturday evening a dragged my old Green Devil out of long-term storage, got it cleaned up and Sunday morning headed into the sun in convoy with my old mate Steen in his decidedly cool 1968 Simca 1200S Coupé.

The weather was nothing short of perfect, so turnout was quite strong. I would guess around 400 classic cars ventured through the streets of Copenhagen, with a wide variety ranging from pre-war to youngtimer, from budget people’s car to high performance supercar, from early NSU Prinz to fully kitted-out Ford Econoline, from Saab Sonett II to Jowett Jupitar. Much as we all obviously have our favourites – and rightly so too – it’s really that broad variety which makes events like this really interesting and at times even enlightening.

I’ll let the pictures do most of the talking this time, as I think they really say it all. For whatever it’s worth though, personal highlights were reacquainting myself with Tim’s stunning and highly original 1974 De Tomaso Pantera GTS – the colour combo, the factory wheel-arch extensions, the graphics: It adds up to pure, undiluted automotive porn! At the other end of the spectra, I’ve never before spent quite that long taking in all the crisp details of a first-generation VW Polo, but this particular green mid-seventies Polo L was simply perfectly presented and actually looked really smart. The early Alfetta berlina was rather appealing too. But the one I most wanted to drive home was an ultra-rare Datsun 710 SSS Coupé. For me, it simply sums up all that was good about the popularity of family-car based performance coupés of seventies Japan. It looked great parked up between three other perfectly presented classic Datsuns.

But the very best part was of course the social aspect of attending the Springtime Muster again – it must have been six or seven years since I was there last time. Catching up with old friends again was lovely, and while Steen who I drove in with complained a bit about it always being the same classics attending, of course you only suffer under this if you attend the same meets year after year. So on that note, why don’t we all commit to attending at least one new classic car event during this coming summer – just to see and experience something new within our world of classic cars. Remember, it’s all about variety…