The Gathering 2015 PICS

[Lucky]

Sadly, I really didn't take all that many photos; it was a three and a half hour drive up and even with getting out of my onanism pit at five something o'clock, we still didn't manage to get to Shelsley until half ten. After admiring the awesome sight of the UK's largest collection of working RX-7s and saying our hellos, it left us about an hour to wander around before the heavens opened. We'd made it about as far as the paddock, but then had to scurry back to the car to shut the sunroof! A while spent sheltering under Pete's awesomely prescient gazebo kinda implied that the weather had greater patience than I did and was quite happy to hang around all day if necessary. So I persuaded Pete (the other Pete) to come with me on a photo-gathering mission. Not that I particularly needed the company, but more because he'd stolen Becca's brolly off her and I thought he might do the decent thing and shield my camera from the worst of the rain with it. Needless to say, this didn't happen...

So, I came nowhere near the number of pics I'd like to have taken, saw about half the show field and none at all of the hillclimb. By around one o'clock I was wetter than John Inman it didn't really matter if I got any more wet, but unfortunately half the cars had buggered off by then, so it made it a bit academic hanging around. So, in short, a thousand apologies for the somewhat patchy nature of the pics. If I didn't take one of anyone's car it's not because I didn't like it, more like I never even saw it.

On the plus side, I seem to have at least sorted the cooling problems on my Rex... finished sorting it all at the traditional eleventh hour.. ie. the day before a 400-mile roundtrip shakedown. Well, if it was going to go wrong, it may as well go horribly wrong! As it turned out, the new e-fan and wiring performed faultlessly and I even had time to go round the block to collect my rear numberplate when it fell off Hurrah! Anyhoo, too much talk, not enough pics...



Awesome sight of the RX-7FB stand. Probably representing a significant number of the remaining roadworthy RX-7s in the UK, lol. Nice how they all look the same, yet they're all uniquely modified too. Anyway, I wasn't expecting anyone else to take any photos of them so I had to get a few in I wanted to work through all the cars but needless to say this didn't happen cos I kept getting distrac... oooh, look. A bunny. It was lovely to see Peedey and Becca again, who we haven't seen since the Gathering last year. Y'see? Retro Rides, bringing the far-flung outposts of car buddies back together. It's a service



This is what the bay of a voodoo-fired dorito-on-a-stick powered rotary weirdness looks like, in case anyone was wondering. Excellent to see Dave's engine bay full of working engine again... the last time I saw it, it was full of James trying to wrestle the engine back in!



The Elford Turbo. Legend in its own lunchtime and certainly one of the best preserved cars not just on our stand but in the whole damned field. Literally concourse condition, awesome









James' FB, definitely with his own stamp on it now. I've not seen the windscreen trims polished up before, it's certainly different





Pete's demo model of the rotary engine definitely puts mine to shame - though I notice his is lacking a pink blanket to set it off properly - it even has a handle for interested punters to turn it with... without trapping their fingers in between the rotor and housing. Which hurts. Go on, ask me how I know. Anyway, thanks are definitely due to Pete not just for his life-saving gazebo (and how the hell did you fit that in an RX-7!? :-S ) but also for the spark plugs and shiny nut he donated... and, of course for being as amusing in real life as he is on a forum



Anyway, pleasantries over with the fellow FBers that were about, and having completely failed to take anywhere near enuff photos, we set off into the wilderness to get randomly distracted by random pieces of random cars. Such as the snowplough conversion on this Dolly



And this, apparently, surprising Skoda



and wondering how many man-hours went into sticking down and lacquering all these stamps. You did lacquer them, yes?



and trying to remember our obscure British marque identities to work out which flavour of old Austin this wee thing was. A30, I'm going for. Excellent sticker on its bum!





Rather like Dr Who, I think your favourite Cortina is always the first one you watched as a kid. Therefore proper 'Tinas all must have four headlights in my still-childlike brain



Achingly tidy Firenza was just one of many cars I intended to come back to and photograph more thoroughly... and then never got round to



Giulia Spider likewise. Although I did see it after the storm hit wearing a funky golf umbrella, I never got a photo. Shame, I wondered how effective that method was as a roof



Saw this Mini last year, and it's a triumphant piece of engineering and really pretty too. Shame I never got the chance to mooch around it in more detail



Classic Alfa homage thing was really well-finished and clearly a labour of love. And unique, which always counts for a lot. Liked this very much. You just don't see enough damascened dashboards in this day and age





Clio was not only beautifully finished with a really great colour (brown, like all the coolest things about the 70s, is making a comeback it seems) but also superbly engineered with a bootful of turbo lump.





SZ Alfa is an unusual thing... a standard car that stands out even in a field full of highly modified ones. But then Zagato always did have a knack of making the "ordinary" look preposterous!







T-Bucket had a lot of nice touches... and a LOT of intake... but my favourite bit was definitely the smiley face on the diff case. Just what you need on a day that's grey turning to black





Air-ride Merc was impossibly clean and such a neat install. I guess it didn't look quite so clean once it had made it out of the field! I always feel sorry for owners of such lovely cars, thinking how much work they've put into cleaning... sorry, detailing... only to get their P&J coated in beastly umska. As Uncle Monty would say





A bit of a Renault. I liked the sticker



I reckon that a few thousand photos of this beast might surface soon, so just as well I only took a couple. I love the Alfa engine conversion... and I bet the owner hates the "was that the only way you could make a Lotus less reliable?" conversations. Very tidy, very cool





Great to finally see the Pink/Red Panther in the flesh. Just one of many threads on RR I haven't posted on cos I couldn't think of anything constructive to say beyond blurting half-conceived admiration in a splurge of tongue-tied gibberish like an adolescent first date at the prom. However, Mr Croker's attention to detail as shown on the build thread is just as humbling in real life. Always nice not to be disappointed when meeting your heroes





I've obviously a lot of love for all things Mazda... even more so when they're obscenely low and silly like this B2000 pick-up. One of my greatest regrets in life is not pursuing the bids on Uncle Timmy's rotary-converted B2000. Too late now



TVRs. Surprisingly reliable!




Right, time for breakfast and to swear at the kids for a bit. Finish this up laters

[Lucky]

Right, moar...


Saw this excellent Spa special Capri really struggling to get out of the field later on. Hope it wasn't too covered in scunge! Lovely car, not least because it has my wheels on it. Remarkable good taste there





R31 Skyline made a nice change from the more common later models. Mmmmmm, Watanabes. Lovely





Tango-flavoured Ascona was just one of several impossibly clean and well-finished cars on the day. Jaw-droppingly immaculate and amazing levels of attention-to-detail.







Love this Celica and have taken many photos of it previously, so it's excusable I only got a couple. Was this in one of the magazines a while ago? RC maybe? Well deserved if so





Viva. Brown. Brown IS the new black



Flaming chicken showed a truly wonderful level of patination. I'd want this bonnet just to hang on the garage wall



Another impossibly clean car ... how do people do it? No matter how scrupulously I clean mine it always looks grimy in comparison... Astra had many top-notch mods too. Mmmm, AP Racing. My missus had an Astra of this vintage (though nothing like as superb as this) and the first we knew of its death by TWOCing was the ol Bill ringing up and asking if we wouldn't mind going and removing it from someone's front garden wall





Slightly less immaculate was this MkII Tina. Nothing wrong with that (other than the incorrect number of headlights, of course) although I was slightly nervous smoking near it



GMC shop van was like what Mr T would have driven if he'd been cool enough





After a brief pause for sustenance in the form of seared pig product and griddled chicken ovulations, we made it into the paddock. Where there were some superb display and guest cars to ogle. Such as this sharknose CSL that was like walking through the Philadelphia Experiment into a BMW showroom thirty years ago. Great colour. So rare I get to write about a turquoise car I'm not even sure how to spell it



This Marlin thing looks like it ought to be a bit of a jolly good wheeze since it appears to be a Morgan-type chassis wedged full of potent Bimmer lump. I'm guessing traction might be at a bit of a premium



I love this Vitesse, and this is possibly my favourite pic from the entire day. It just looks sooooo cross, like a caged wild animal. Thanks are owed to Peedey who insisted I get down on my flabby belly to make this shot work. It's the getting up again afterwards with my dodgy knees that's the real struggle, but then you gotta suffer for yer art, lol







Gotta have some love for anything with a triple-rotor 20B engine in it, even if it is the lost generation of RX-7 that Mazda probably should have let Porsche keep their drawings of the 944 when designing. Still sounds madder than a box of greased otters. Shame the owner's most memorable contribution to society was appearing on Wheeler Dealers opining that snakeskin-wrapping an FD made it worth five grand more than stock...





An improbably wide Escort...



...and an impossibly tidy one



No, no, you're doing it wrong. The axle stand is supposed to be under the car...



Bimmer shows little of the original Bavarian architecture under its skin. Some serious scaffolding going on in here!



Racey Prelude looked like a bit of a laugh, though rather disappointingly no longer has the funky strip-LED dashboard thing that was the best thing about them originally (in my humble opinion, lol. Don't write in, this has been a joke)





I have genuinely no idea about the provenance of this GN-Spider II thing, although it's clearly one of those wonderfully eccentric sporting vehicles that only the quirky Brits can produce and has no doubt been blattering up the various hillclimb tracks of this septic isle for the past century or so. Hilarious device, although taking pics of the guys trying to bumpstart it did bring home just how close the weather had got above the hill in the bgackground...







From a distance I made the appalling crime of thinking this was a Pop, but on closer inspection it revealed my rank ignorance. It is of course a Standard Flying Twelve. As ane fule no. And it's absolutely bloody gorgeous









Awesome Chevy van is one of my cars of the day. There's literally nothing I'd change on this



By now the weather had really arrived. The trees were whipping themselves up and showing the underside of their leaves (which is a sure sign you're about to get wet, as my old farmer Grandpa used to point out). All that was left was a tiny sliver of weird yellowy light on the crest of the hills below a big black chunk of water hanging in the sky like the Sword of Damocles. It was about time, I figured, to return to the show field and close the sunroof...



And on the way, this was the last pic I took before the sky fell on me. Moggy van is about as good a rolling advert for a business you'll ever see

[TOOL]

More pics of 20B FC and B2000?

[Lucky]

I'll do my best. Not sure if I have any



So after a quick dash to the car... got the sunroof closed just as the sort of preposterous and highly unconvincing rain you tend to get in Hollywood movies dropped on Shelsley... me and Madame le Jo - sorry, Madame le Jo and I - sat and watched the drops for a while as people scurried hither and tither like a scene from a disaster film. The trauma soon stopped, though. Actually, it didn't but we couldn't see it any more due to the windows steaming up. Lured out of the shelter of the car (and when something as flimsy as an RX-7 seems like security, you know things must be bad) by the need for a ciggie, we stood instead under Pete's inexplicably space-defying gazebo. It was... well, it was cosy



We spent a while under here whilst I tried to get passable photos of anything within range... generally these turned out inexcusably bad. Some fluked their way past quality control though. Hmmmm, that looks like a Toyopet Crown. Don't see them very often



...and oooh, look, an RX-7. Marvellous



and this was far and away the best club name I saw, albeit on a completely empty pitch.

#

Anyway, after a while of this it slowly dawned on my feeble brain that the weather wasn't going to do the decent thing and bugger off, indeed the only time it stopped raining was so the earth could breathe out giant clouds of mist like there was some disgruntled titan buried in the folds and trees of the hill. Honestly, it's easy to see why my ancestors saw gods and demons in every mountain and forest back in the day



So, resigned to the fact it was either stand under a gazebo and then go home, or just cut out the middleman and go home right away, I went for the Third Way and just manned the Four-X up, resolved myself to getting wet and dragged Peedey along for moral support on a quest to find cool stuff to photograph. He wasn't much moral support, to be honest. And he never shared the damned umbrella either. But if anything captures the spirit of my afternoon at The Gathering, it's this pic; Pete radiating disconsolate misery and dejection with every fibre of his being



As I was now beaten into acceptance that the best I could hope for were lots of pseudo arty pics of raindrops, I had a quick practice on Pete's tidy Rex (not that Pete, the other Pete, who wasn't at all disconsolate, in fact he was obscenely cheerful throughout)



To be fair, we could have just lurked under the gazebo and snapped the cars leaving as we were near the exit [s]slurry[/s] road and a lot of folks were deserting the sinking ship but that seemed like cheating and besides half the time I had no idea what I was pointing the camera at, it was that dark and my mole-like eyesight left me baffled. Actually, I'm still none the wiser on some of them. I mean, what the hell is this? A Jetta? I've no idea, I just liked the wheels. Which was pretty much all I could see of it through the murk



Just about the most tragi-comic thing I've seen in years was my mate's pulling technique on our last jolly boys. But second only to that was the horrifically sad and yet strangely absorbing sight of the fella with this Viper trying to stop it from filling up with water. It seemed to be shy one roof, and the combination of blankety groundsheet things and manky old tarpaulins he pressed into service didn't really seem to offer the sort of robust engineering solution he might have wished for. And all the while he got wetter and wetter himself to the point where he might as well just not have bothered. We felt for him, really. But it didn't stop us sniggering



Here's another thing I've no idea what the hell it is. Is it some kind of Pilot pickup thing? Might have helped if I'd took a photo of the entire thing, really. With hindsight, like. I got distracted by the excellent paint touches, especially like the "Love" and "Hate" headlight buckets. Maybe my choice of which to photograph says much about my twisted psyche? Seems like I'm a hater





This is what you need in weather like this; 4WD rally slag in crisp white... not just so you can make headway on the slurry but also co you can actually see it from more than three feet away



Even Peedey, the world's ficklest critic, had nothing bad to say about this Viva. Which is high praise indeed. If I had to be mega-critical I guess I could dock it a couple of points for not being brown





Nato green MX-5 almost disappeared into the scenery. Guess it must work then. How the hell the fella drives it this low without regularly scraping bits of it off is a mystery. Hardcore (no, not that one). I couldn't even get into the Waitrose carpark with that. Actually, forget that, I couldn't even get into the Lidl's carpark



Ultima had no worries about leaky sunroofs and suchlike since the only opening aperture on it other than the doors appears to be a tiny plexiglass ventilator about the size of the average bathplug. Fat tyres, daft power and the same weight as a sieveful of hope. Must have been interesting getting that out of the field!



Never has there been a more apt name...





This is a rare old thing (and also white, which helps). An Isuzu Piazza Turbo, such a piece of 80s magnificence that it really ought to have massive hair, rolled-up jacket sleeves and espedrilles as well. Honestly can't remember the last time I saw one of these







Another car I would have loved to get more pics of, but all I could do was a quick stalker-style distance one as it was leaving. Early Starlet, lovely.



More white cars then? Honestly, the auto-ISO setting on my camera couldn't keep up and even the white ones were coming out grey by now. Several photoshop steps means you might just about be able to make out the car in this photo. Another RR legend sneaking off early, one it seems I'm destined never to get up close and personal with. Seems to have poo leaking down its pristine flanks, too. Sad times





This 240Z was gorgeous, immaculate (yeah, and white). Really nice example that drew us in from a long way off, mostly because of the beautiful splitrim wheels oddly. The contrast of shiny bolts against the black hoops really worked. Awesome to see the original over-under shotgun exhaust, too. Was this a US-only thing? I didn;t think the UK cars had this exhaust. Write in if you know






Moar to come in a bit. Including some non-white cars. Promise!

[Lucky]

Oooops, missed one




4th-gen Corolla. Reassuringly brown



Volvo 480. Not quite brown, clearly not trying hard enough! Flip-up headlights make up for a lot, mind



Given how much work has been put into this S12, it seemed inconceivable that anyone would leave the bonnet off it. Maybe Worcestershire rain doesn't have all the chalk in it that our Sussex rain has, if I did this with my car it'd end up looking like the inside of a kettle





Another one I'm not really sure WTF issit. I'm guessing there used to be some kind of Taunus in here somewhere?





Datsuns are something I can never quite get to grips with, mostly because they're all named after numbers and I'm number-blind. Or maybe thick, but whichever it is, I forget the order numbers went in as soon as I stop looking at them. So, this is a pickup. More than that I can't say


and this is a... errmm. A Datsun



and this is a ... well, it's a foglight. On a car. A Datsun car. Oh God, this isn't going well at all, is it? Errr... a brown Datsun car?



Thank God for that! This, then is a 140Y. Obviously. And about as brown as they come, which is awesome. I tell you, brown is the next Big Thing







Corolla Levin? I actually don't even remember taking this photo, I think this must have been about the time my feet started squelching in an alarming manner and kept distracting me. No-one should have to be aware of their own feet! In fact, my shoes got so wet that when I got home and took them off four hours after leaving, there was a perfect imprint of all the wrinkles of my sodden socks embedded into the white and flaccid soles of my feet. Which was slightly repulsive and zombie-like. No-one should have to be afraid of their own feet, either



Anyone offer an opinion on what the kit on this MX-5 is? Pitcrew, maybe? I liked it a lot from the front, with its 275 Fezza-esque vents and lines. I wish it didn't have bus/Corvette rear lights, but you can;t have everything





I always have time for a Karmann Ghia... maybe it's from having to listen to Ada-san bleat on about them so many times, lol. This one was particularly pretty for some reason. Maybe the paint, maybe the stance. It just seemed... I dunno... nice









BMW Touring had some groovy deep-dish going on.



Lada. With Russian badge and everything. And Maserati wheels. Honestly, life gets no better!





To be fair, this Cressida is unusual enough that it probably would have stood out even without the slightly daft exhaust. Not really sure if it's supposed to be Bosozuku or what, but I thought it kinda looks a bit odd on an otherwise stockish car. Great car though





This Caddy is just mad! I can't work out if it's a hearse (thought they had windows rather than Landau backs?) or just the world's least economical florists van, but what a gloriously bonkers thing!



Another serendipitous piece of aging; the unintentional paint fade on this Monza made me love it more even than the immaculate white one just up the row... and the white one would have been a lot easier to photograph. By now it was properly p...p...precipitating down again and I felt Peedey's already stretched good humour might not survive me taking pics of both







we both agreed that we liked this Volvo very much. And we both felt slightly dirty and soiled for admitting it, lol



I honestly have no idea what this is. I'm not even going to hazard a guess. How about a "write your own picture caption" competition, lol. Nothing but the undying admiration of your peers as a prize, sadly



Starion. Gahhh, he's back on the white ones again. Actually, this was nice to see, not only because we like the 80s box-arch Japanese pocket rocket anyway, but also because they always seem to be red and a white one makes a nice change



Having orbited the field as far as we dared without risking actual death by drowning... and still not seen half of what there was to see, sadly... we made it back to the illusory shelter of the Mighty Gazebo. It was raining like it hated us again, so a while passed in the forlorn hope of another respite. It didn't happen, so I contented myself with snapping those intrepid souls who could still make it across the field



The white Mini I mentioned earlier had a few tries at getting up the bank onto the perimeter bank amidst the slither of spinning wheels and the chirp and flutter of dump valves, then gave up as a bad job and went round the long way. It did make a wonderfully orchestral job of it while it lasted though



Eventually I had to forage out again, mostly because we were having an argument about what a certain maroon car parked a way off actually was. I thought it was a Hillman, Pete thought it wasn't because it only had five letters in the boot badge. I thought that he ought to count himself lucky I could see the boot, let alone the badge, with my frail old bat-spec eyes (I mean they're really crap, not in a sorta "Better break out the Bat-Eyes, Robin" sorta way). Pete thought that I sucked. I think he's probably right. Jo thought it was a red one. So I had no choice but to go out in the rain to find out. Pete lent me the umbrella this time at least.

It was a Simca 1301, if you're interested



Which at least excuses us not recognising it, I suppose. Not exactly the most common of things to stumble across





And with the natty little Simca 1100 nearby, it must have represented a significant percentage of the working Simcas in the UK. I don't even know that "Simcas" is the correct plural, now I think about it. Not something I've ever had to worry about before, funnily enough. Simcaii? Hmmm



And that was really that. It wasn't going to clear up. My socks weren't going to miraculously dry out. The large percentage of cars that had buggered off weren't going to come back just for my sake. And it was still a damned long drive home, with the horror of the M25 looming in the wings like the harbinger of doom. There was nothing for it but to paddle through the sodden grass back to where Pete (no, the other Pete) was collapsing the epic gazebo, past what I seem to have recently learned is the inestimable EmDee's Polo...



...and other such scattered trinkets of joy as were left. Ooooh! Colt Sigma! Rare!





This 80s Olds Cutty looks almost as sad as I felt by then. Such a beautiful day to start... and don't get me wrong, I love taking pics of cars in the rain. Just not if I have to be out in the rain to do it...





Pausing only to sabotage the stripy tape around our pitch so we could sneak out the back way and avoid the Capri and Mini-swallowing tarpit that the road had become, a final look around confirmed that there was indeed far more space than there was car



As always one tried to follow Granny's advice and go out on a song. But the song would be Leonard Cohen's So Long Marianne and I don't want any of your suicides on my conscience. Yes, I do have one. So I'll have to end on a high. So here, have an absolute archetype of what RR is all about, brought to you by a diehard bloke who was actually drying his car off with a chamois thing even as the other end was getting soaked by the teeming rain all over again. What icon of motoring could possibly warrant such a level of love and attention from its owner? Yes, that's right. It can be nothing less that the paragon of the RR idiom, the humble CrappyBeigeMetro. I wonder, if I stuck a hashtag on that, could we get it trending...?



Incidentally, that photo was taken round about 2 p.m. and hasn't been re-touched at all. Just to show you; yes, it really was that dismal! But besides the weather (and we were overdue a crap one, after all) it was the usual triumphant mix that only The Gathering can offer and I loved every minute. It'll be blistering next year, you wait and see.

As always, thanks for reading and until next time, get out

[KiwiDave]

for dedication there Nik. Captured the atmosphere brilliantly.

[TOOL]

Reassuringly brown lol.

That blue datto is a 180B.

great pics as always

[Threesevens]

Yeah, some great photo's. wish I had been there.

[MelloYello]

the square black estate is a Zephyr MK4 me thinks,

Great coverage as usual Lucky - where do you find the time?

[spoddy]

Thanks for the photos. It looks like a great wee car show full of interesting motors. Pity the rain came on.