Rushden Classic Car Show

Published on 6th August 2023

Following the great weather at the Heart of Shires event, we hit it lucky again with the excellent Rushden Classic Car and Bike Show on Sunday 6th August. The day before had been a complete wash-out for events such as Blakesley Agricultural Show and the British Moto GP at Silverstone, the Sunday turned out to be sunny ice cream weather!

Steve Groves and Howard Main turned up really early, with Steve towing our unit as the trade stands had to be on site at 7.30am! Our unit looked lovely and clean as Steve cleaned it the day before! This is the second time we had been to Rushden, and again we had a steady stream of people genuinely interested in becoming a safer driver. There were very few times where there was no-one looking at our stand. Jane Monk developed an excellent way of attracting people who would otherwise have walked by!

For some reason at Rushden (and nowhere else!), we had a large number of parents with teenagers in tow think our Young Drivers banner meant we were some type of under-17 car club where their offspring could experience driving – we spent a lot of time telling people about CarKraft (the non-driver sessions)! We equally spent sometime talking about the NSRA’s mature Drivers Roadshow being held at Rushden in early September!

Last year we were placed next to Ian Phillips (our Associate Officer) craft tent selling his wonderful hand crafted wooden objects – this year we asked to be next to him!! Two slots further down was a “The Cheesecake Lady” selling individual cheesecake offering from their red trailer. It was early in the morning when Ian came across and asked if we could lend the cheesecake stall our generator as theirs had broken. No problem, however our generator did not have the right connector for their fridge but never ones to give up Ian and Steve came up with a solution using extension cables from us right down to the cheesecake stall! Apparently the cheesecakes were very nice!

We bumped into a number of our members who were visiting and even one who was exhibiting their lovely Mini. There were over 400 cars and motorbikes, ranging from a few pre-war through to more recent cars.

Thank you to Howard Main, Jane Monk, Rene Crevel, Steve Groves, Henny Cameron, Nick Moodie, Rod Baker and Philip de Clermont.