Our Classics Christmas

From breakdowns and failures to the joy of driving, 2017’s been a busy year for the CCW fleet

Variety is the spice of life and, certainly, nothing shows how different one classic car enthusiast’s taste in four-wheeled fun is from another quite like our weekly updates on what members of the CCW team have been up to with their classic cars; on the road or in the garage.

But we love all the cars that appear within the Our Classics pages – they are, after all, the very cars with which we practise what we preach by buying and running a wonderfully diverse range of machines, even if it means having to do utterly irrational things to keep them on the road.

This year saw Features Editor, Chris Hope, and his Triumph TR7, plus Charlie Calderwood and his Volkswagen Scirocco, join the team, so it would seem that sporting classics remain compulsory at the very least. Both cars have seen plenty of work, while the same can also be said of Editor David Simister’s MGB, Production Editor Mike Le Caplain’s pair of octagon-badged classics – MG Midget and MGF – plus News Editor Murray Scullion’s Mazda MX-5. ‘What about Managing Editor, James Sadlier?’, I hear you cry. Well, his Ford Mondeo wasn’t quite sporting enough for him in the company of the aforementioned cars, so he’s rounded off the year by buying our old £500 Challenge Ford Puma. Speaking of which, Nick Larkin has made sure that he won’t be going into 2018 without the keys to the £500 Challenge MG ZR in his pocket.

Our 30-strong-ish fleet (Nick keeps forgetting where his are, and we’ve given up trying to keep track of Richard Barnett and Richard Kilpatrick’s ever-rotating fleet of classics) has charted the ups and downs of classic ownership throughout 2017. Our cars have been everywhere from the Hebrides to Switzerland, and experienced breakdowns, show visits and country lane blasts galore.

We’ve picked 12 of our favourite stories to give you a flavour of what we’ve been up to, these past 12 months. We’d love to know what you’ve been up to with your classic, too, so do get in touch with your stories.