The Festival of the Unexceptional

They came, not by the dozen, nor in their hundreds, but by the thousand. An unholy alliance of everything from the merely very ordinary to the downright grotty. These were cars that, when new, would attract less attention than a political rally by the sun-ripened tomato party. And yet now people from all over the country drive hundreds of miles just to see them, while, more bizarrely still, others from across Europe drive thousands of miles just to show their remarkably unremarkable old tin boxes to an audience who really understands. Welcome, then, to Hagerty’s Festival of the Unexceptional.

It’s the tenth running of the event since the inaugural Festival in 2014 (there was none in 2015 and 2020 was cancelled by Covid) and every year it grows a little bigger. Home since 2021 has been Grimsthorpe Castle in Lincolnshire and the ‘Concours de l’Ordinaire’, which I have been asked to judge, is available to cars made between 1970 and 2000.

Three things strike you almost at once when you turn up, and first is the sheer variety of cars on show, second their earth shattering ordinariness – which still has the power to amaze even when you know exactly what you’re letting yourself in for – and third just how long it’s been since you last saw cars like these in the wild.