Frankfurt Motor Show
There were plenty of stunning classic cars to check out at Europe’s biggest car show
It might be easy for the outside observer to conclude that the Frankfurt motor show is all about the future; certainly, there was a huge amount of chatter from the manufacturers about electrification and the impending phasing out of the internal combustion engine. But behind all that, the love and appreciation of classic cars was never very far from the surface.
This year, the sprawling Frankfurt Show hosted an Oldtimers’ hall, which spotlighted some of Germany’s best tuned and performance cars of the 1970s and ’80s. Top of the list of cars on show was a themed stand from the tuning company B&B, which produced some amazingly weird and wacky Porsche 911 variations during the 1980s. Its stand didn’t disappoint, with a line-up of three beauties that would probably make a 911 purist’s blood run cold– but on the day, under the show lights, they looked amazing. Nearly as much as the B&B ‘ breadvan’ VW Polo – a true one-off.
The major manufacturers turned down their heritage content this year (probably because of all the futurism), but Ford rolled out an example of all eight generations of the Fiesta, and Mazda – bizarrely – brought along a Cosmo in order to show us how amazing its classic looked compared with the moderns…
The announcement of the launch of Brabus Classic was also an interesting development – there’s clearly still money to be made in selling classics with modern upgrades as new cars.
Whether that remains the case in a post-petrol world – whenever that may be – remains to be seen.