Mopar Muscle Association UK

Where to start...

Despite the flood of volunteers to have their car on the stand... ahem... our 'if you get desperate' offer was accepted a few weeks ago, so we did what we've done on our 3 previous visits when we've had our car on a stand (2x Classic American and 1x MMA) and drove up there on the Thursday morning, stayed overnight in a local B&B, spent the day at the show on the Friday then drove home and returned Sunday morning to spend the day there and drive the car back home Sunday evening.
All the above worked out ok tho in an ideal world we'd like to stay the full duration (compromise to keep the other halves happy ).
The rush to vacate the NEC and its many car parks causes mayhem on the surrounding roads for a couple of hours on the Sunday evening, so another time we might do what Bob & Liz (Challenger) and Craig & Wendy (Charger) did, and stay an extra night and drive home Monday morning. Swings and roundabouts I suppose, as the Motorways are more likely to be busy on a Monday morning...

But as we always go for one day anyway, we enjoy the opportunity to spend more time up there and in theory shouldn't feel as rushed looking round. It was still a struggle to see everything tho, having 2, nearly 3 full days up there!

I'll start with some pics from the Thursday...

Few more from Thursday...

Not sure if it's noticeable to the naked eye but Thursdays pics were all hand-held, with the camera set on auto so are a bit grainier than I usually get when I make the effort to use a tripod.
For the Friday tho, I went that extra mile and lugged a tripod round, with the ISO set to 125, if you're interested

On the Friday, I thought it would be nice to splash out and get an auction catalogue for £20, which gets 2 people into the fenced-off area where the cars are kept before the Saturday auction. We usually just per over the fence like poor-relations to all the posh sorts the other side of the fence
But Wendy and Craig kindly let us use the catalog they already had, to get in
So I took a ton more photos than I normally would have done

Sorry about the rotated portrait pics, I've given up trying to anticipate which way they need to go

BTW, the Mk1 Transit went for £62k in the auction

Thanks twins. We can always depend on you for some great pics.

Please excuse my Alfa Montreal fetish...

One good thing about the auction cars is that you can open the doors and sit in them if you wish, tho the only one I tried that was locked was the 07 Rolls Royce. I did sit in one of my dream cars tho, the DBS, and its driving position (seat, steering wheel, gearstick) was awful!

Bargain for me tho was the 55 Bel Air, estimate £22-28k. Not sure what it went for but even for a 4 door that has to be a bargain for a fully restored car

Couple more from the Friday, before we headed off home for a day off

One for me (Alfa) and one for Stu (Volvo)

We returned on Sunday with my son and one of Stu's daughters, hoping to get round too see what we'd missed on Thurs and Friday. Just about managed it, tho we probably didn't spend as much time on the stand as we should have done

While we were on the stand, we did speak to someone we've seen a handful of times over the years at Knebworth etc, (ie nearer to home) who worked on the Satellite when it was last resprayed in 1997 after a close encounter with a lamp post Maybe he doesn't/didnt get to work on cars like these very often but it's nice that he remembers ours, 25 years later.

We made point of being at the Classic American stand at 3.30 to see which Cadillac had won this years Car Of The Year (joke) and, well, what a surprise, the winner was the owner of the Cadillac. Stunning car tho, and he did all the work himself (Ben said).

Later in the day, we found ourselves back near the auction and as it was coming to a close, the nice lady at the entrance said we could come in without a catalogue, so had another mooch around at what we couldn't afford

Hall 8, I think, was full of Fords...
No Mk4 Cortinas tho

Last lot!

Thanks for the effort in posting this vast amount of pictures!

Good to see NHK 295M: brings to mind one of my favourite TV quotes:
"Who are you?"
"We're the Sweeney son, and we haven't had any dinner."