Craig Cheetham
Craig explains the importance of unexceptional classics.
‘The cars in our convoy resonate with people’
Some cars are born classics. Cars like the Jaguar E-type and Lamborghini Miura, which are undeniably, heart-stoppingly beautiful. As a result, they survive proportionally in far greater numbers than the cars you see in this feature. The Rover 420is, for example, is a much rarer car than an E-type. One of just nine left.
Yet one that a lot more people than that have fond memories of. You see, it’s all very well saying a car is unexceptional, but there’s a very big difference between unexceptional and uninteresting.
Cars are part of the fabric of society. They are as much a part of our heritage as our buildings and our antiques, snapshots of time and marker points in history. And for the vast majority of the population, it’s unexceptional cars from which memories are made. There aren’t many people who can remember being dropped off outside the school gates in their mum’s Miura, after all.
Yet every single one of the cars in our unexceptional convoy will resonate with someone. A student ride home in a Bluebird minicab after a disagreeable kebab? Passing your test in an Allegro? Learning the finer points of understeer and oversteer on a very wet day in a Marina estate? I have done all three, and those are just my own memories of this fine sextuplet of automotive unexceptionalia.
Backbone of the movement
These are the cars that are the very fabric of the classic car scene. Even if you drive a sports car today, chances are you first became interested in cars because of the one that was parked outside your childhood home. And it was much more likely to be one of this lot than something exotic. For many people, the very love of cars started not with a Ferrari or a Porsche, but with a Vauxhall Astra or a Citroën BX.
And that’s why, today, we must preserve them. There are loads of collectors looking after the Porsche 911s, Ferrari 250 GTOS and Lamborghini Countaches of this world, but only a small but dedicated group of terrifically wonderful people looking after this lot, along with our Cavaliers, Cortinas, Metros, Montegos and Toyota Corollas, to name but a few. At Practical Classics, we salute you. You are the custodians of our nation’s social history. People who are preserving the very things of which memories are made. Those family holidays, lost and lamented friends and relatives, historical road trips and driving experiences that mean a lot more to so many of us than just the car itself.
They’re generally pretty easy to maintain, too.
OK, so finding trim parts for Citroën BXS on ebay isn’t exactly a doddle, but mechanical components are still readily available and largely inexpensive for most types of workaday Eighties and Nineties cars, while their unexceptional nature means they’re usually pretty straightforward to work on. You don’t get that with a Ferrari.
Doing it for tomorrow
The future of the car looks very different right now than it ever has done before, but by preserving the normal, workaday, motors that meant so much to so many, we’re doing our bit to keep the very history of our country alive. Don’t let the environmentalists or naysayers tell you otherwise!