Hello all,

Taz and Manky have asked me to do a little write up on this year’s Romsey Boxing Day Classis Car & Bike meet that I have organised now for 6 years. I started the event when myself & many others had struggled to get our yanks into the great Wickham meet. It was never set up in competition to Wickham & I’m glad to say the two events now complement each other & I’m sure help each other these days. Last year was our busiest to date & was chaos, so this year I had to look at extra car parks but that increases the running costs, (It’s a free event that I fund & I always plan it to be that way), so I went cap in hand to Adrian Flux Specialist Car Insurers who kindly helped me with some of the running costs this year as the public liability cost is ridiculous for four hours!!! Knowing I had so much extra space this year & feeling that I wouldn’t fill it but wanting to make use of it after paying that ridiculous premium, I spent many evenings emailing TV, radio, magazines, papers, car clubs, web sites............ anyone that didn’t tell me to get lost actually!! Trying to get as many people to know about it as possible!!

After a slightly slower start than normal, what then began to happen was way beyond my expectations. By 10am Aldi, our usual car park & the “bikers yard” by kind permission of Lord Brabourne, were full & half hour or so later Crosfield Hall was fast approaching the same & what astounded both myself & friend & helper Al Piekaar, was the amount of public spectators there were, the place was heaving like I’ve never seen. Show vehicle numbers were up enormously with somewhere between 350 & 400 cars, (we lost count in the end!), & bikes just shy of 200 & spectators............ heaven only knows, certainly more than the already large crowd of 1500 – 2000 or so of last year. Adrian Flux kindly supplied us with copies of their great magazine & other goodies & they were flying out of our hands quicker than we could get them out of the boxes at times!
As always with this show the variety was huge with English Marques being represented by all sorts of years & models of Austin, Jaguar, Morris, Ford, Aston Martin, TVR etc, lots of European representation from Volkswagen, Porsche & Fiat & the Yanks were plentiful with Chevrolets, Buicks, Cadillac’s, Lincolns, Chryslers, Dodges. All manner of motorbikes turned up from huge Harley’s, thru all the great fifties English classics, down to an ensemble of tiny monkey bikes!!

After the chaos of last year & us over filling the one car park a lot of efforts were made this year to keep traffic flowing & car parks from being blocked & all the cones new signs we set out, (that filled the boot of my Buick &/of travelled down stuck out of the rear seat of my 58 Lincoln convertible!), really helped things along & many kind comments were made on how well organised the affair was with many asking what the heck we were going to do next year as it just get bigger!!....... We figured we may see if we can persuade the local council to erect a multi storey on Crosfield hall car park before next Boxing Day!!

George & his colleagues on the food wagon were kept extremely busy throughout the event with queues growing ever longer even though they had 3 staff on this year and no matter how hard they worked the queue never died till the end of the show. As well as vehicle numbers increasing, this year saw a huge rise in monies collected for this year’s chosen charity. Anyone that knows me, knows I won’t have people shaking collection tins under visitors noses as I figure Christmas is an expensive enough time of year as it is & whilst I’m aware we could possibly raise more money by doing so, I think it would annoy a lot of people. Getting the collection tins noticed is the hard part though, but this year we had the car park littered with them & one tin that was held by a false hand & arm trapped under my Lincoln proved the most favourite place to donate, raising laughs from adults & inquisitive looks from youngsters trying to see if the rest of the person was under the car!!! The extra tins paid off & we raised £613.78 for the Prostate Cancer Charity.

A great day, a fun day filled with happy smiling people enjoying lots of classic steel & each other’s company.........surely what Christmas is meant to be about??
I’d like to thank all those car & bike owners who made it possible, without you bringing out your vehicles we’d have no show, the visiting public would be stuck for something to do & the charity £600 quid worse off....THANK YOU ALL.

Many thanks,
Steve Biddlecombe.