Generation next
If you worry about who will look after our cars when we are gone, here’s some superb and reassuring news
DESPITE THE threats of bans on new petrol cars, restrictions on cars in towns, and various official haruspices telling us where and when we can’t meet to look at old motors this year, the future most definitely smells of petrol, leather and painted metal. Across the UK there are organisations springing up, expanding and thriving that mean the classic scene is wellplaced to take on the miseries and bannits. They’re proof that classic cars are not only very much part of the future of driving, but also that an industry worth in excess of £5bn to the UK is thriving, with a social scene that’s becoming more diverse and creative year by year.
Classics, by their nature, need care and maintenance. That means there’s a need to make sure the specialist techniques and knowledge to keep them on the road are passed down deliberately, rather than ad-hoc (as important as that is). But the skills that were common when classics were just old cars aren’t anymore; why use a skilled craftsman with an English wheel to form a panel when your computer-controlled press can knock out a few hundred in the same time? But, even more importantly, why bother training his replacement? Yet these – along with trim, electrics and mechanics – are the very skills that keep classics on the road today and into the future. And, increasingly, as the demand for classics increases, training people in them makes firm economic sense too.
In 2016, the Heritage Skills Academy opened its doors at Bicester Heritage with just one workshop focused on training young men and women in classic vehicle mechanics. That year, it took on its first cohort of 12 apprentices. Just four years later, the course now has nearly 100 apprentices on its books, 8% of them women. By way of contrast with mainstream apprenticeships, this may not seem huge, but there are few other apprenticeship areas that can boast a 650% increase.
Now the Academy is expanding and, from January 2021, Brooklands Museum’s purposebuilt workshop facilities will become the Academy’s southern site, where the team will train apprentices for the Heritage Engineering technician qualification. Students alternate between working for their employers and spending nine weeks training at the Academy.
Owain Johns, the Academy’s Development Director, explains: ‘In Bicester, we’re in the middle of the country – Brooklands gives us the opportunity to meet the demand for skills we’re seeing from restorers, dealers and workshops in the South East.’ He continues:
‘This is about developing the skills the classic industry is desperate for – shaping, brazing, welding, trimwork – and it’s not the sort of thing you can teach in a year. It’s about being creative, diagnosing and fixing things, not just being a spare parts fitter.’
The apprentices are already demonstrating what they ’re learning. The Academy ’s Facebook page shows a delighted apprentice, Lewis Revell, explaining how he spent his lockdown rebuilding the head on his own 91,000-mile Mercedes 190 2.6 – and doubling its value in the process. Other apprentices have repaired the Bicester Heritage-based Wriggly Monkey brewery’s 1930s Ford delivery truck and are moving on to its ’54 Armstrong Siddeley.
Dominic Taylor-Lane, from The Association of Heritage Engineers, sees a bright future too: ‘We’re giving young adults the opportunity, skills and knowledge they need to fix things, not just replace them with new things. For me, that’s what sustainability is all about. The social side of classics is growing and broadening, too. The whole mobile heritage scene – events like Retrorides – are real theatre that have an appeal way beyond the traditional classic audiences.’
Talking to Dominic and Owain, it’s clear that as well as a profitable and fulfilling working future, plenty of younger people see a way to interact with classic cars that they don’t see in many modern ones. And, as we start to emerge from the dust of Covid’s wreckage, we’ll need the economic and social boost that classics provide more than ever.