This years Footman James Classic Car Show at Event City in Manchester appeared to bean even bigger success than last year, with more clubs, trade stands and of course more enthusiasts. 

As usual, your senses are hit as soon as you walk into the halls, glistening body work makes you squint and the overpowering aroma of car wax causes you to sneeze!  I’m not complaining, it just reminds me that I should clean Deux Smurf more often.

Walking through the doors the first thing to catch our attention was the DeLorean stand.  There was a few standard vehicles and then the obligatory ‘Back To The Future’ copy - it was brilliantly finished, even with its personalised number plate.

Swiftly moving on I snapped the Bentley Mulsanne that could be yours for the hefty price of £63k, and a few cars away was a fantastic red American pick-up, and that’s where I lost Muddy Madam - she fell in love with it!

All I can say is, is that it’s a good job that I haven’t won the lottery as they’ll be a load of 80’s cars parked outside Muddy Towers, and the neighbours wouldn’t half moan.  

“Who’s parked the green Vauxhall Viva estate outside my house?” 

As always, I try and choose the single car that if I could, I would drive home in.  Would it be the Aston Martin V8, the Opel GT, the ’79 Cherokee Chief, Charger, SD1’s… in the end I gave myself a headache thinking about it.  Eventually though it was the heavily modified Series 1 Jaguar XJ6L that got my vote, it was a stunner!

As usual, outside there was live rally action which is always a crowd pleaser, and of course the Sporting Bears Motor Club were on hand to raise money for a children’s charity by offering rides in all manner of exotic cars.

After an hour or so of wandering around, reminiscing about the 80’s, I eventually caught up with Muddy Madam at the Heinkel Trojan club stand were she was chatting to one of the owners.  Although she talks sensibly about only needing one car, I reckon it wouldn’t take her long to have a fleet of her own after a lottery win! 

As ever, I struggle when I’m writing about car shows because there’s literally so many things going on, so many different clubs with a variety of different cars, so as usual I’m going to let the photos do the talking, enjoy.