Insurance company Footman James have been holding their Coffee and Chrome Collective events throughout the year, mostly at Chateau Impney but also at the British Motor Museum located at Gaydon, and for their end-of-season meeting, chose the – still unopened – grand hotel and it’s grounds once more, and I went along for the third and final time this year last Sunday.
You can see my previous reports from the Chateau here and here – so I won’t spend any time going into the location’s background. While Coffee and Chrome attracts well over 500 cars they tend to be more of the everyman (and everywoman) type of classic, which is no bad thing. Even so, there was a pleasing variety of classics, from the humble to the exotic, and most stops in between. I rolled up to join the long line of cars entering the grounds just before 9.00 in my 280CE, and once parked, set off to see what I could find, to paraphrase Mungo Jerry (Google is your friend).
Let’s start with some of the humble, and they don’t come much more humble than a Morris Marina 1.3 coupé. This was a genuinely lovely 1972 example in white, in super condition, a perfect candidate for the Festival of the Unexceptional, as was the metallic blue 1977 Ford Cortina Mk IV, the white with black vinyl roof 1969 MG 1300 and the utterly charming 1965 blue and white Ford Anglia estate – we see a decent number of saloons – there was one on site – but far fewer of the estates. It always gladdens my heart to see survivors of the everyday cars our parents and grandparents used to drive.
There was a fine quartet of British saloons from the 1950’s and ‘60’s parked together – although one of them was actually an Australian interloper. Three were Wolseleys – a 1958 beige 15/50, a 1971 red 16/60 and a pale blue 1965 24/80 MKII, and in amongst them, a fine 1962 Ford Consul Classic saloon; together, they made a very distinguished group.
It was the 24/80 which was the one from Down Under. This was built by BMC (Australia) in 1965 and while outwardly identical to the 16/60, under the bonnet lived a 2.4-litre 6-cylinder version of the 1.6-litre 4-cylinder unit in the British-built car. You live and learn when wandering around classic car shows.
Speaking of distinguished, and staying in the UK, a very well-kept 1967 Austin Vanden Plas Princess R saloon in two-tone black and grey, with the 4-litre Rolls Royce engine, looking ready to transport a local dignitary to pen the village fete.
There was a good selection of US heavy metal, some of it very heavy, such as two Lincolns, one a 1976 Continental Mk IV, the other a 1979 Town Car, it’s very long sleek lines – all 19 feet 5 inches or a little under six metres, clothed in Cordovan Metallic, a finish used on fewer than 2,000 of these land yachts, according to the info handily posted behind the windscreen by the owner.
These two were the definition of a lounge on wheels. There were a few Mustangs of course, but only one Corvette, a metallic blue 1974 C3, but the most interesting American car for me was the orange metallic 1968 third-generation Dodge Polara, with its very straight-edged styling – I liked it. In amongst the Americans was a very interesting Mercury – amazingly, this 1949 car had only 49,000 miles on the clock, was wearing it’s original coat of metallic blue paint and had never been reupholstered – a genuine original. Looked good, too.
It’s always a delight to see a Mercedes 190SL, one of the most elegant cars ever made, in my humble opinion, and the red ’63 model at the Chateau would have looked very in place outside the main entrance. The car of the event though for me was the absolutely fabulous 1972 Iso Grifo Series II. This example was the last of just five RHD Series II Grifo’s built with the small-block Chevy V8. Finished in a deep metallic grey and apparently the result of an 18 (sic) year restoration process, this dramatically beautiful yet simultaneously aggressive combination of US muscle and Italian style stole the show – what a motor car!
Among cars that have just recently “qualified” as classics – if you go along with the notion that cars 30 years old and up are classified as such, an early-ish 1992 Nissan Skyline GTR exuded power with a lot more subtlety than the models that followed, while the banana-shaped 1992 Lotus Elan M100 also looked good, although not as good as the two unquestionably classic S4’s and the yellow +2 parked elsewhere.
Back to Japan, and a tiny high-revving Honda S800 from 1967 was parked behind a white 1978 Subaru pick-up that I don’t recall seeing before; it also kept miniature company with a 1937 FIAT Topolino, which shows up fairly regularly at local events – the FIAT and the Honda looked like you could put one in each pocket and take them home. Still in Japan, the local Z-club put on a show – I’ve been seeing quite a few Z-cars at shows recently.
An oddity – to me at least – was the 1991 Midas 2+2 Coupé, a car I had never seen anywhere. I remember the Mini-based Midas’s of years ago, but this was new to me – it seems these little coupés were based on the Rover 100 or Metro platform, and I think that the 1991 year of manufacture data on the DVLA website actually refers to the donor car, though I’m not sure, but I understand the 2=2 wasn’t introduced until 1995.
What else? How about two very different sports coupés – a green and white 1974 VW Karmann Ghia and a metallic gold 1979 Series 2 Lotus Esprit made a strongly contrasting pair, both in terms of colour and shape – the VW all rounded curves and the Lotus a golden wedge. Truthfully, only the latter was really a sports car., but the Ghia has style.
Mention of a wedge brings me to two more extreme examples of the genre, if I can be permitted to call it that – two identical, except for the wheels, TVR 420SEAC’s complete with their huge flat tea-tray rear spoilers. These were probably the ultimate TVR “wedges”, after which they moved to become ever more extravagantly curvaceous and powerful.
A couple of interesting variations on a small estate car – two Mini Clubman estates, one a 1977 model in a fetching shade of blue, the other a ’78 in maroon, looked cute but very conventional compared to their contemporary yet very different and typically eccentric French Citroën Ami 8 Break in yellow. Love it or hate it, there’s no denying the Ami has bags of character.
Let’s end with a car that got our own Dave Leadbetter so excited at the event he went to recently at the site of the Great British Car Journey – a Lotus Carlton. In his piece – which you can read here – he mentions the consternation this super-fast sports saloon caused back in the day, and the “fable of 40 RA”, the getaway car the police couldn’t catch. Well, that registration number is now on another Lotus Carlton – this dark grey 1992 example – and belongs to the man whose car was stolen back then and was used to race away from the pursuing police. It really is a small world sometimes. An intriguing note to end on. Photos of this Carlton and many other classics from the day are below.
