Heritage cars a trip down memory lane

Petrolheads flock to Killarney to relive the good old days

IN A culture as diverse as ours, Heritage Day means different things to different people – but to petrolheads, it means cars. The cars we drove when we were younger, the cars our parents and grandparents drove… and the cars we fantasised about.

Motoring enthusiasts will tell you that cars and car people populate their most important memories. Which is one of the reasons why hundreds of them brought their treasured vehicles, all made before 1985, to Killarney race track on Heritage Day and hundreds more walked among them, chatted to their owners and relived pleasant memories.

There was music from the golden age of motoring before the 1973 oil crisis, food and drink on offer, made the old-fashioned way from just about every era and, drifting across the paddock, the smell of meat sizzling on dozens of grids – because Heritage Day is also National Braai Day.

At the 1985 South African Motorcycle Grand Prix at Kyalami I was told by a famous English racer that the Kyalami round of the championship was considered one of the more difficult because it was so easy to get distracted from the job at hand by the aroma wafting across the circuit from the aptly named Barbecue Bend.

The cars at Killarney, polished to within an inch of their lives, ranged from an incredibly tiny Austin Seven (how on earth did Herbert Austin convince people it was a four-seater?) to a 1968 Cadillac Fleetwood Brougham that had more in common with the USS Enterprise than with the aforementioned Austin (how on earth do you parallel-park a car almost seven metres long?) to the Triumphs, Sunbeams, Studebakers and Hudsons of yesteryear.

It’s been said that you don’t own a heritage vehicle, you look after it for the next generation. With cars such as these, bearing nameplates that no longer adorn new models, that becomes even more true.

To see the model my father was driving when he courted my mother, or a car just like the one in which my grandfather took me to the zoo as a toddler, in the metal rather than in a flat image on a page or screen, is a privilege and a real reminder of who we are, where we come from and the cars that drove us here – they are our motoring heritage.

PICTURES: DAVE ABRAHAMS BUFFED UP: Hundreds of petrolheads brought their treasured vehicles to Killarney on Heritage Day and hundreds more came to walk among them, chatting to owners and reliving pleasant memories. The car in front is a 1938 Studebaker Commander 6.

SPORTY: Herbert Austin’s tiny Austin Seven was on display. Austin managed to convince the motoring world that the sporty-looking car was a four-seater.