Rustival

9th March 2024

 

Clapped out to concours every vehicle is welcome! was the strap-line for a very different car show organised by British Youtubers Ian and Carly from HubNut, Matt from Furious Driving and Steph from idriveaclassic. Rustival was held at the British Motor Museum at Gaydon, Warwickshire, a nicely central location with good access to the motorway network and only about 90 minutes drive away for me. I follow two of the organisers channels and fancied a Saturday trip out. Now I don’t have a particularly interesting car but that’s rather the point of Rustival - all wheels are welcome - and since it was also cheaper to go as an exhibitor than as a general visitor I booked my space. I even gave the car a wash and polish a couple of days before, something that happens… shall we say infrequently? 

 

Exhibitors were allocated into two car park areas named Van den Plas and Mayfair, I was allocated to Mayfair and entry was from 10:00 a.m. I arrived a little before 10:15 and the exhibitor areas were mostly full by that time so I was parked up almost at the far edge of the show. 

 

 

 

 It looks a little lonely here but the area quickly filled and my Toyota RAV4 Hybrid was framed by a Porsche 944 and a Vauxhall the details of which I cannot now recall. I’d been a little concerned that my boring and reliable modern car would look a little out of place but it was far from the newest car present. As far as I could tell it was, surprisingly, the only RAV4 present. As my sister pointed out it was bound to win the prize for “Car I’m Most Likely To Go Home In” :-)

 

I’d planned ahead and taken a flask and a picnic lunch because who wants to spend time queuing at the burger van when you can be checking out the exhibits? So first I took a cup of coffee for a walk around the Mayfair section which contained some interesting, ordinary, and rare cars

 

 

 

 and other vehicles, not all of which had seen wax or polish recently

 

 

 

which sums up the ethos of the show nicely.

 

I popped back to my car and ate lunch then headed down to the Van den Plas area where the various Youtubers’ displays, portable stage, stalls, and a lot more exhibits were located.

 

 

 

 And I spent the next few hours wandering around looking at what everyone had brought and chatting with or listening to exhibitors and visitors. There was getting on for 900 cars exhibited and although my ticket included entry to the British Motor Museum I never actually made it indoors (though I have visited before). Time flew and soon it was nearly 3 o’clock, prizes were being awarded

 

 

 

 and it was almost time to head home. Particularly since I set my alarm for 0600, woken at 0355, and failed to get back to sleep before it was time to get up so having been mostly on my feet I was starting to flag.

 

A couple of my show highlights:

 

 

 

 This Austin A40 Farina Mk1. I’m always going to be drawn towards one of these as a 1961 Countryman model was my first car. The young lady owner of this example has also adapted it into one of the smallest micro-campers I’ve ever come across. So that’s my choice for car of the show because I’m partisan :-)

 

 

 

This slightly scary Reliant Robin based trials car, complete with quite a lot of countryside still stuck to it from its last trials event. The gent who owns and built it was happy to explain to visitors the why’s and wherefores of his creation and yes, it’s street-legal and yes he drove it to and from Rustival so I guess he was as glad as anyone else that we had fine weather on Saturday!

 

Here’s 63 photos that I took on the day in a Flickr Album

 

 

 

 Rustival was a great success and the organisers plan to do it again next year so I hope to do it again too, I’ll be keeping an eye on https://www.rustival.co.uk/ and suggest you do as well if you’re interested in all types of cars not just the “special” ones.