I can’t say I’m normally a big fan of New Year and all its associated shenanigans, but I’ll be delighted to consign 2020 to the bin.
For a child of the 1970s, the year 2020 sounded optimistically futuristic when viewed from the safety of the 20th Century. In reality, it’s been a miserable time, reminiscent of the Great Plague of 1665 minus the chance for distracting japes. Back then there was good money to be made from calling upon people unannounced in the small hours wearing the disturbingly beaky costume of the Plague Doctor, but lockdown rules have prevented that sort of activity this time around. 2020 has been decidedly and consistently no-fun. Perhaps opportunities for amateur medical quackery will return next year, perhaps even accompanied by other outlets for innocent entertainment. Who knows, perhaps (radical idea) we might be able to go to places and see people. Such freedom.
I’m not a natural sponge for new information, mostly because my brain is already full of fragments of trivia that would be potentially interesting if only they were hooked up with enough related fragments to consolidate into real knowledge. However, the general shitshow of 2020 has at least given me some time to think, which admittedly is little consolation for everything else. My main thought as New Year approaches is that another twelve months have gone by and we’re not much further on in any meaningful fashion, assuming you don’t consider sullenly turning the pages on a calendar to be an achievement. That means we all have a year fewer to achieve what we should have done in this wasted year. Although I am clearly a global-level high achiever, I consider that aiming too high for 2021 would be an effective way to self-sabotage with undue pressure. Therefore, I’m going to stay with aiming low, but realistic.
As with any addiction, many of us look for greater and greater highs when it comes to old cars. With time on your hands and online auctions a-plenty, you might have spent more days than normal obsessing about your next classic car. Boredom might have fuelled your conviction that this will be the year you finally acquire that Alfa-Romeo Montreal, that Porsche 356A or that long-coveted Maserati Mistral. Good luck to you if you do, but after being forced to mark time in this global prison experiment, I’m just looking forward to regaining the freedoms I enjoyed before, with any luck. There hasn’t been any specific rule against driving classic cars but with no mass gatherings to attend and the remaining pubs varying between closed and joyless, I’ve not seen the point in going out too much. I sneaked in a few days of motorsport when Covid regulations allowed, but the motoring memory that sticks most firmly in my mind came from an illicit hour one evening in September when I went out at sunset and blew the cobwebs away in grand fashion. In a world where “track and trace”, quarantine and “stay indoors” were the literal order of the day, an hour of noise and speed was a sensory re-awakening. There would normally have been little noteworthy about that drive, but simple pleasures become all the more precious when you lose them.
When it comes to recapturing that feeling, virtually any old car will do the job. I’ve never really bought into the idea of owning truly fancy motor cars, mainly because I am a professional northerner and therefore an inverse snob of Olympic standard. My thinking has long been that if our opportunities for freedom are limited, why limit yourself by waiting for what you may never have? Unfortunately 2020 brought that into sharper focus than ever. That’s not a defeatist outlook, it’s rather a reminder that you shouldn’t settle for less than wanted but you need to ensure you’ll still really want it if you finally obtain it. If 90% of the thrills can be had right now rather than waiting for 100% of the thrills at some poorly defined point future, I know what I’ll choose. It’s clarified my feelings around what are often optimistically described as “project cars”. I’ve been bitten by these before, and am currently chewing my way through one that was never even meant to be a project. Though it’ll be great when it’s done, it’ll probably be too good to use in any meaningful manner, and I’d rather have been driving the thing than staring at boxes of bits and large credit card bills. When 2021 rolls around, I’ll probably look to convert it into cash and spend that on further adventures instead with my more usable old tat.
I doubt 2021 will be a flawless bed of roses but surely it’s got to better than the year that preceded it. It would be nice to imagine that as winter turns to spring we’ll see our old lives gradually returning and we’ll be able to pick up our hobby in earnest once again. There are some potentially exciting events that had to be shelved in 2020 but which should see the light of day in 2021. Top of my list is the Yorkshire Motorsport Festival, an ambitious event based in Holmfirth that promises a classic car extravaganza with the first-ever competitive hillclimb to be held on closed public roads in the North of England as its centrepiece. The prospect of thousands of spectators and visitors coming together for a long weekend of cars, live music, sheep show and motorsport may seem unlikely right now, but with 125 acres to play with and the date set for late June, there’s a good chance we can all enjoy some long-overdue entertainment. Likewise, we must hope established events such as Goodwood and the Donington Historic can once again let spectators through their gates, and hopefully we’ll even have the opportunity to trudge the halls of the National Exhibition Centre complaining that the lighting makes decent photography virtually impossible. No matter where you live, I’m sure you’ll have similar hopes for your part of the world. Whether or not the whole interruption has reset your view of the world or just reinforced it, there’s no denying that gaining full enjoyment from our cars is easier when life plays along. There’s lost time to regain, people to see and places to go. As we scrape 2020 into the pedal bin of history, it’s time to regroup and look ahead. Here’s to better times…
