The ninth iteration of the most eccentric and popular event in the UK classic vehicle industry, the 2023 Hagerty Insurance Festival Of The Unexceptional, was the biggest and liveliest yet. Anyone with even a passing interest in motors will find it to be a magical trip down memory lane with the estimated 1200 fascinating cars on display, 3000 spectators, and a Concours lawn highlighting 50 of the most storied ordinary motors in loved condition. What makes an automobile ordinary? As they evaluate the 50 mundane hatchbacks and saloons on show at the Concours d’Ordinaire, the judges are faced with this dilemma.
Festival Of The Unexceptional 2023
The Festival Unexceptional (FOTU to its many friends), now in its ninth year, is a celebration of ordinary automobiles with 1,200 vehicles and 3,000 aficionados converging in the well-kept grounds of Grimsthorpe Castle in Lincolnshire to ogle the average. Numerous unremarkable automobiles are parked in rows on either side of the magnificent drive. The hordes of FOTU aficionados support automobiles that will probably never truly qualify as classics. Tercel trios, scores of Metros, and rows of the 1980s and 1990s repmobiles jostle for the room. Inside the castle walls, where the trophies are at stake, is where the true competition takes place.
Like in any Concours, the judges are looking for well-kept, original cars, but they are also concentrating on the less remarkable entries. “If your mum and dad had bought a new car and you went into the school playground the next day to tell your friends, they were so unimpressed that they just said “Oh right, shall we play football then” If that happened 30 years ago, that car should be here,” says chief judge Danny Hopkins, editor of Practical Classics. According to fellow judge Jon Bentley, vehicles that would have failed magazine group tests or that were disguised as special editions to get them out of the showroom make for excellent FOTU candidates.
The adversary is status, as Steve Cropley of Autocar once quipped. Beyond that, what matters is how each tale is told. The more zeal there is for keeping a car that most people would consider inferior, the better. And for just that reason, Sion Hudson’s 1983 Austin Metro comes in second. He spent the following two years “de-pimping” his vehicle after learning that his base model had been upgraded after buying the car. To restore it to the state in which it left Longbridge, Sion removed the radio, the passenger door mirrors, and even the side repeaters. Stephen Pike was resurrecting his 1991 Daihatsu Applause in Sweden at the same time.
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Source: vtt.edu.vn