This year a magnificent total of 52 classic TVRs attended the Pre 80s meeting at the Motor Heritage Museum at Gaydon near Stratford upon Avon in England. As well as a central location, the museum is excellent and has a great café. By 10am cars began to arrive, and soon the grass in front of the museum began to fill up. There were also around 30 later TVRs, but we didn’t let them park near us! Gaydon was also playing host meetings of around a dozen Rover SD1s, and 3 ultra rare Pipers.
As well as the TVRs we welcomed Classic Driving Developments Ltd. who were displaying their uprated hubs and driveshafts, and Hagerty Insurance, who insure quite a lot of early TVRs. We were also fortunate to have ex TVR owner Martin Lilley in his 3000S and ex Technical Director Mike Bigland with his beautifully modified Taimar. Several TVR specialists also attended, David Zumstein from California, Adrian Venn of Exactly TVR, Mike Luck of Classic World Racing/David Gerald and Doug Elwood and John Chatley the former owners of David Gerald .
Stand out cars this year included Andrew Gray’s Tuscan V8SE conversion, which has been converted from a Tuscan V6 to a V8SE. Other fresh rebuilds were Chris Gilpin’s 3000ML and Andy Thomas’s Vixen S2, and Richard Flanaghan’s trailered his barn find Grantura Mk 3 along. This was the oldest car this year, oldest car driven there was Chris Overton’s 1800S, while the newest was Duncan Lambert’s 3000S which wasn’t registered until 1984.
The Motor Heritage Museum is always worth a visit, at present they have on display an ex Le Mans TVR T400R and an MG prototype based on a 350i chassis and running gear, there are also a lot of old British cars which always bring back a lot of memories. After the votes had been counted the concours D’Elegance was won for the second year in a row by Ian Renwick’s 3000M. Best new restoration went to Chris Gilpin for his 3000ML, and best modified car was Stephen Pailing’s 3000S which is now powered by a 3 litre V6 from an Alfa Romeo 164. We had a minutes silence for Steve Reid who sadly passed away shortly beforehand, and then the Broken Piston Award which was designed by Steve was awarded to Stephen Taylor who built his Vixen S2 new in 1969 and still owns it after 46 years and 180,000 miles.
Next year’s event will be in early September again, with the location still to be decided.
Bildquelle: Oliver Edwards
Text: Oliver Edwards