LAND ROVER FREELANDER I WAS THERE

The launch of the Freelander – Land Rover’s answer to the Toyota RAV4 and Honda CR-V – was one of 1997’s biggest talking points

Fancy a Ford Ka turned into an aquarium, or the chance to win a free Daewoo for a year? Both tried to grab showgoers’ attention at Earls Court’s penultimate motor show outing, but we doubt either managed to sway a single set of eyes away from three new performance offerings making their debut in the nation’s capital.

The show gave us our first chance to see the new, water-cooled 996 iteration of Porsche’s 911 in the UK and was where Chevrolet decided to launch the C5-generation Corvette onto the British market. TVR’s new Speed 12 – which wowed everyone in concept form as the 7/12 the previous year – claimed to be faster to 60mph than the McLaren F1, thanks to its 660bhp, 7.7-litre V12.

If you weren’t there for the eye-grabbing new supercars then the star debutantes were almost certainly the Vauxhall

Astra MkIV ( yes, it debuted at Frankfurt a few weeks earlier, but this was the first chance to see it in Vauxhall, rather than Opel, form), Land Rover Freelander, Alfa Romeo 156 and Jaguar XJ8, including the tasty 370bhp XJR. There were also a couple of concept cars that gave tantalising glimpses of future models – the Toyota Funtime was a 1999 Yaris in a smarter set of clothes, and Audi’s AL2 was, to all extents and purposes, the aluminium-cloaked A2 that debuted at the turn of the millennium.

You could also venture out of the back of Earls Court and put some of 1997’s mud-pluggers through their paces on a specially-designed off-road course. The Freelander wasn’t one of the cars on offer, but clambering up tricky inclines in a Ford Explorer or Ssangyong Korando isn’t something you can do at every motor show…