News

Coventry Car and Motorcycle Day a success

13 September 2017

There were 90 cars in total taking part on Saturday, despite the unsettled weather making it trickier for classic cars to get out and about. The cars began their journey at Coombe Abbey before driving out to Coventry city centre.

classic cars underneath trees at Coombe park

classic cars in the rain

This year’s Coventry Car and Motorcycle Day was dedicated to the memory of local car enthusiast and expert Maurice Smith, of well-known Coventry car dealership Smith & Sons Motors. Maurice was a great supporter of the Transport Museum and in recognition of this, the day featured the inaugural ‘Coventry Car Day Shield’ in his honour. This award was given to the car that visitors voted as their favourite on the day.

For 2017, the vote went to a 1974 Hillman Imp Super owned by John Halford. This seemed entirely fitting, as John used to work with Maurice at the Humber works of the Rootes Group before Maurice went into the car business and Maurice’s favourite car of the Rootes Group was a Hillman Imp.

This award was presented by Maurice’s widow, Ann Smith who brought along Maurice’s own Armstrong Siddeley 1935 Landerlette Drophead driven by their son Christopher. The runner up car in was a Jaguar E-Type Series 1 Soft Top owned by Simon Pollard.

The day was a great success with positive feedback from participants:

“We had such a brilliant time. It was very well organised and everyone involved were really helpful and friendly.”
“Thanks to you and everyone involved in arranging the event today. Thoroughly enjoyable and very well organised…Looking forward to the next one!”
“Thank you for an exceptionally brilliant day. The drive out was sensational…a great turn out, roll on next year!”

classic cars in the city centre

The participating marques for 2017 were:

• Daimler
• Mini
• Jaguar
• Armstrong Siddeley
• MG
• VW
• Morris
• Panther
• Triumph
• Ford
• Aston Martin
• Toyota
• Audi
• McLaren
• Talbot Sunbeam
• Lanchester
• Austin Healey