"Can you help me with me legs?"
An odd request to my father and me when we arrived at the rally. Fortunately, the legs in question belonged to a mannequin belonging to a gentleman collecting for a medial charity as he displayed his vehicle. We carried his "nurse" on her sun lounger across the field and helped set her up by his car. Sadly, he then ruined it buy starting to rattle on about "all these immigrants being let in", at which point we swiftly left him to it.
Not that we wanted to hang around chatting to bigots - cars were arriving thick and fast. A line up of Bond Bugs caught the eye first, well they are bright orange. As a delighted child proudly shouted to his parents, "There are nine of them.". Learning maths while looking at micro cars seems good to me!
The advert had mentioned up to 100 cars and I'd thought this was a wild over-estimate. There can't be that many on the road can there?
Well, if they didn't make the hundred, it was very close. The field was certainly full. Most appeared to have arrived under their own power too with only a few trailers evident. The owners I saw didn't take prisoners while driving either, these things can shift!
As ever, I found myself wishing to join the hobby. Looking at the bare chassis for a Meadows Frisky, I realised just how practical owning one of these things could be, at least from the maintenance point of view. None of the structural parts looked to challenging and the engine could easily be lifted out by hand for work on the bench. In fact I was slightly tempted by an engine setup on an autojumble stand just for the fun of some light restoration - but then I have enough hobbies.
Anyway, what a great way to spend a couple of hours on a Sunday. Maybe I'm a bit tall for micro car ownership. Maybe it's something to think about once my fleet is back on the road. How many people dream of plastic cars that could fit in the back of a van?
National Micro-car rally website.
More photos over on Flickr.
2 comments:
Looks like an interesting day out. Some of those cars are so odd its difficult to believe that they actually exist! Especially the last two, an overgrown Smartie and something that fell out of a Kinder egg. But Bond Bugs are decidely odd as well, were they all orange?
An old workmate of mine bought a bubble car to restore. Afer a few weeks with no news I asked how the restoration was going. 'Sore point' he said. Apparently he decided to work on it one windy evening and lit a parafin stove in his wooden garage to warm it up before starting, the heater fell over, the garage burnt down and the car melted!
I think all Bond bugs were orange when they left the factory. Any other colour and it's a repaint, or oddly, a Corgi model as they issued a pale green diecast version.
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