1972 MGB GT
As the NEC Classic Motor Show 2016 finished with its usual rousing chorus of horns on the Sunday afternoon, racer/engineer Adam Crowton offered me a lift back to my MGB GT in his lovely 1966 Mustang notchback. Roughly 45 minutes later, the V8 woofled into a now mostly empty E4 car park to find that my car... had disappeared!
Adam, convinced that I’d got the wrong car park, drove to the next one, then the next and then every car park we saw for the next two hours. Finally, reaching a closed gate, Adam called his family to explain his lateness while I hopped over it to look for my car – no joy.
I asked Adam to drop me at the security gate but the Mustang’s battery had run flat, as running near tick-over on a cold dark night is problematic for a dynamo. I then knocked on passing classics’ windows seeking jump leads and by that time was frozen and soaked to the skin. Eventually a chap with a Land Rover Series II got us going.
By now it was after 8pm, and poor old Adam dropped me at the security gate and even loaned me £20 for a taxi. The security guard’s camera-feeds couldn’t spot my dark-coloured BGT either. I was now ready to call the police and report my car stolen, but a black cab came past so I waved down its driver, who took me back to E4. I didn’t know what else to do and was sure that I’d written it down correctly.
As we entered, an NEC crew were dismantling some temporary generator-powered lights… behind which was my MGB GT!
It turned out that, because the NEC’s overhead lights had failed, the crew had placed these dazzling forward-facing temporary ones in front of my car, shining directly at the entrance, making it impossible to see. With the lights off, my car had re-appeared like a Klingon ship turning off its cloaking device.