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The Festival of the Unexceptional
1 year ago
FOTU celebrates the ordinary cars you'd forgotten
There’s seriously rare stuff here, and not just in the concours. When did you last see a Mazda 929 coupé for instance? I’m not sure I ever have. Some cars you’d have seen by the million when new but have now almost entirely been sent to the great scrapper in the sky. For example the car that won the concours – which we’ll be getting to in a minute – is the only example of its kind currently registered in the UK. And that particular claim to fame had no bearing on our deliberations whatsoever.
Because this is not a normal concours. I’ve been lucky enough to have been a judge at Salon Privé before, one of the most prestigious concours anywhere in the world and it’s all very serious stuff which, given the quality of the cars upon which you are deliberating is entirely fair enough. The Festival of the Unexceptional is not like that. This year the eight judges were given extensive checklists against which to mark all aspects of every one of the 50-odd cars entered into the concours and it was entirely in keeping with the spirit of the event that the first and only thing we did with our lists was chuck them in the bin. Instead we just chose the cars we liked. These tended to be cars that were in what I consider to be the correct condition: neither clearly neglected nor – just as bad – over restored show queens in clearly better condition than when new and never used. We looked for cars that had been preserved, and kept in decent condition of course, but not so pristine as to discourage its use.
I set considerable store by specification too, the lower the better. One of the more charming things about our winner was the list in the window of all the equipment it didn’t have, because it was the basest, most poverty-stricken spec model of what was already a pretty basic car.
"We were roughly guided by three criteria: condition, originality and the story behind each one. Bribing of the judges is not only allowed, but actively encouraged which may go some way to explaining the half stone of biscuits I managed to ingest during the course of the day"
We also wanted the right story behind it. I remember one bloke proudly telling me how his car had done 40 miles in the last 30 years and it only ever travelled by trailer to car shows. So that was him out of the reckoning. But the blokes who drove their Talbot Solara 1000 miles from Poland just to be here before turning around and driving straight back? Special commendation right there.
So there were no rules, but we decided between us to be roughly guided by three criteria: condition, originality and the story behind each one. Bribing of the judges is not only allowed, but actively encouraged which may go some way to explaining the half stone of biscuits I managed to ingest during the course of the day. We also decided that if a car was so inherently desirable and of a certain age that it would be more properly recognised as a classic car, that would rule it out too because, by definition, there’d be nothing unexceptional about it.
And some cars were just too nice. I was surprised to see a rather familiar Mercedes A-Class turn up, now owned and used reasonably regularly by a lovely chap who’d pasted its entire history in its windows. The oldest A-Class in the country, it had been Mercedes’ original press car, which was then bought by a journalist who used it for a decade before it was sold back to the company after a minor bump, which used it to teach its young apprentices how to restore a car to show condition. The journalist then bought it back for another few years, then sold it to an elderly gentleman who could no longer drive his SL and from there to its current owner. But OEM-standard restorations are not what we’re looking for, so out of the reckoning it duly went, a shame for me because I was that journalist and my children grew up in the back of it.
“No question, something is happening here. So turned off are these kids by increasingly dull and unaffordable modern fare, they’re turning back towards the cars their parents drove. And discovering a generation of machines that cost buttons to buy, are simple to maintain and are immune from depreciation. In the meantime they get to stand out from the crowd and drive something light, fun and characterful”
Others gained commendations just for entering into the spirit of the occasion, like the couple who turned up in their Fiat Multipla, him proud as Punch with his pride and joy, her happy to pose beside it on strict condition she was only seen with a brown paper bag over her head. He’d bought it without mentioning it to her, hidden it and waited until he judged the time was right before dropping the news. I asked how she reacted to which she replied, ‘I just laughed. What else could you do?’ A keeper that one.
But I think what I enjoyed most about the whole judging process was seeing just how many young people turned up in an incredible array of truly unexceptional cars, and how many were sufficiently proud of theirs to enter them into the concours.
No question, something is happening here. So turned off are these kids by increasingly dull and unaffordable modern fare, they’re turning back towards the cars their parents drove. And discovering a generation of machines that cost buttons to buy, are simple to maintain and if they cost any more to run, such costs are nothing compared to the depreciation from which they are immune. In the meantime they get to stand out from the crowd and drive something light, fun and characterful. It is a trend I can only see increasing.
Concours de l’Ordinaire is no ordinary concours
And so to our winners. In third place came a 1979 Citroën Visa Club, which means base spec and an even baser 654cc flat-twin motor, scarcely evolved from that found under the bonnet of a 2CV. I was so charmed by it I thought long and hard about making it my winner. Preserved in beautiful – but not too beautiful – condition, in regular use and complete with an owner with just the right degree of self-deprecation, it was a strong early runner in the voting before just being pipped to second place by a car with a very different story.
This was a 1999 Ford Mondeo LX whose young owner apologised profusely for the fact it came with the 2-litre engine, the largest of three four-cylinder Zetec motors available for it. It was heading straight out of the running until we learned the history behind it. It turns out the vendor wanted to use the car for banger racing, a fate from which our hero determined to save it. To such an extent that when he heard all the seller really wanted was that 2-litre engine, he offered to buy the car engine-less to save it. In the end there was a change of heart and he was able to buy the car complete, for £400. So far so good. But he then spent £6000 just to get it back to the right condition. This on a car that’s now worth £1200 if you’re lucky. Now there’s commitment to the cause.
But the winner, a car placed first by half the judges and second or third by the others, and also the winner of the People’s Choice award (which spectators voted for by scanning QR-codes next to each car) was the one and only road legal Skoda Favorit Forum in the country.
The Favorit is an interesting car in itself as it was the last Skoda designed and delivered entirely by Skoda before VW took the reins, and after all those, er, interesting rear-engined Estelles and so on, was a genuinely credible attempt at a mainstream budget hatchback. And the Forum was offered to those who couldn’t afford anything more, so no radio, fag lighter, rear wash wipe, seatbelt buzzer, sunroof or even boot light.
Its owner was another youngster who bought it because it was otherwise heading for the scrapper for no reason other than it had blown its head gasket. It struck me as sad that such an honest little runabout in such impressive condition could be crushed over such a matter and I’m delighted it got saved. He paid £1400 for it and it was perfect in all but one regard: it had no headrests. Now you may appreciate that headrests for a 1992 Favorit Forum are not the sort of thing you can just order from your local dealer, and it took an age of scouring various online marketplaces before a pair was finally found on a car that was otherwise too far gone and heading for the crusher. The only problem was they were in Aberdeen. So he jumped in his Skoda and drove 1000 miles there and back so he could finally complete his car. An incredibly modest, humble man, he came on stage to collect his award from me looking not much less stunned than if he’d just won an Oscar.
Frankel had the honour of presenting the winner's trophy
I was so happy for him, because of all the people I met, he was the one who best defined the spirit of what I think the Festival of the Unexceptional should be about. It is a wonderful event, conceived for all the right reasons, attended by an ever growing number of enthusiasts, a place where there’s no preening or boasting, just kind, modest people with a healthy capacity for laughing at themselves and a thousand or more cars you’ll rarely, if ever, get to see anywhere else.
The Festival of the Unexceptional is a rather inconvenient 400-mile round trip from where I live, but I shall be back next year, clipboard in hand, ready to meet a new batch of enthusiasts, admire their cars and their most unexceptional characteristics and hear the stories behind them. I’d not miss it for the world.
