DECEMBER 1997

HEATHROW AIRPORT, LONDON

Had this shot of drivers battling through Heathrow’s congested roads been snapped just a few months earlier, there’s a very real chance that I’d have been somewhere in the background.

I vividly remember arriving at the capital’s largest airport at the end of August 1997 and being relieved to check into a Forte Posthouse (remember them?) after what felt like a never-ending slog on the Piccadilly Line – but I wasn’t there to pick up British Airways’ next flight to JFK; my dad had brought me the 193 miles down the West Coast Main Line to see London’s sights for the first time – and to an 11-year-old northerner, it felt like I’d landed on another planet.

Two things particularly stick in my memory from that initial trip; seeing the barriers drop down across one of the airport’s access roads and being amazed to see a BA-liveried Concorde saunter across, and the sombre mood on the final morning, as we prepared to check out and switched on the television. It was 31 August 1997, and we were stunned by the news that Princess Diana had been killed in a car crash only a few hours earlier. The trip back up to Liverpool was the strangest part – nobody uttered a word on that threehour train journey.

Fast-forward a few months to our wintry-looking shot, and things seem to have gone back to their congested normal, if the bored-looking bloke driving the transfer coach to Reading is anything to go by. But he could at least have kept himself entertained by glancing in the coach’s huge rearview mirrors and indulging in a bit of car spotting.

The one that stands out from the crowd in this traffic jam is the Porsche 911 creeping alongside the coach in the middle lane. It’s a 1985 3.2-litre Carrera convertible, and unlike most of the vehicles in this shot, we suspect that B498 BJO is still holed up in a garage somewhere, because it’s been on SORN since 2015. If this Porsche is your pride and joy, we’d love to hear about it.

It’s fared better than the Rover 216 crawling behind it – that disappeared from our roads back in 2004 – but the car behind the Rover represents an entire automotive species that began to die out that year. It must have been hard to imagine a London where there wasn’t an FX4 taxi on every street corner back in 1997 – we can see six in this shot alone – but the last one had left London Taxis International’s plant up the M1 in

It didn’t matter whether you were driving a Volvo T5, an MGB or a stretched Mercedes to catch your next flight – you were always going to get stuck in Heathrow’s traffic

Coventry barely two months before this picture was taken, to be replaced with the rather more legislationfriendly TX1.

There’s also a prevalence of Mercedes models heading in and out of Heathrow, starting with the one immediately behind our coach-driving friend. It looks like a W140-generation S-class – in fact we’d like to think it’s our old £500 Challenge S280, long before the

CCW team got their grubby mitts on it! There’s a W210-generation E-class just creeping into shot on the opposite carriageway– it’s nice to see one that doesn’t have flaky rear arches. Immediately in front there’s the unusual spectre of two stretched W123 models travelling in convoy towards the terminals – perhaps they’re ferrying a high-flying diplomat and his entourage to their next flight?

There are plenty of interesting motors waiting patiently to get into the airport a little further up the lefthand carriageway, including a brace of Rover 600s, a P38a-generation Range Rover, a three-door Peugeot 205 and that bastion of British family holidays barely a few years earlier, the Ford Sierra Estate. But we’re particularly intrigued to know what’s happened to the MGB just to the left of the bus lane; it looks like a late 1960s MkII roadster. We really hope that the owner has fitted an electronic fan to keep the B-series cool in this congestion. There’s also yet another classic Mercedes at the head of the queue; a W123 estate, resplendent in Sahara Yellow.

Cast your eye back over to the right-hand carriageway and there are plenty of what would now be classed as sought-after modern classics attempting to escape the traffic by heading for the M25. Perhaps not the Escort MkV right at the back of the jam, but the Volvo 850 T5 next to it ticks all the right boxes, as does the Volkswagen Scirocco MkII a few cars further up, which looks like an entryspec model, on account of its black rather than body-coloured bumpers. Then there’s the Vauxhall Chevette quietly minding its own business in the far right-hand lane – a base-spec model, if the absence of a passenger door mirror is anything to go by.

But there’s one lingering question that we’d dearly love to know the answer to – is the woman strolling down the hard shoulder on her way to catch a flight, or is she about to make a call on the emergency roadside telephone barely a few feet in front of her? We’d be interested to find out if if there’s a comatose Cavalier or stranded Sierra just out of shot that’s sparked the traffic jam – and whether or not all those people made their flights on time.

‘To an 11-year-old northerner, it felt like I’d landed on another planet’ SLOW-SPEED JET-SETTERS

Something of a golden oldie even when this pic was snapped, we wonder if this MGB is still around? Let’s hope so! Ford’s big bruiser was the first European car with standard ABS across the whole range – not that it’s likely to need it at this speed…...

DAVID SIMISTER Having begun his career on local newspapers in North Wales, David has been with CCW since 2013, and is still honing his tea-making skills.