On hearing that Petrolicious were hosting a member’s meeting at the historic grounds of the Bicester Heritage site (or as some of you may know it as RAF Bicester) I knew it wasn’t one to be missed!
As with most car shows/meets the trick is to get there early so with that, we aimed for a 7am start and with only a quick pit-stop at Clacket Lane’s finest golden arches we made good time and arrived for 10am just 30mins after it started #yasssqueen
Filtering through the car park was a must as it was turning up some real gems inc a Honda City Turbo, a yellow Honda NSX, a number of Porsche 911’s and a road going homage to the Jaguar Silk Cut LeMans winner. If the car park was anything to go by this meet was going to quite something
We were guided into the large courtyard where a line of ex-race cars were fanned out across the back wall on our right aiming into the middle, where a small cluster of exotic Italian finery was bathing itself in the early summer sun chief of which was of course, the legendary Ferrari F40. Sitting back to back with a modern day supercar the F12 TDF what a pairing! The backdrop of a retro car transporter branded in the Marlboro colours enhanced the whole experience and reminded me of the better days of racing, the whole “when men where men etc etc” basically when racing was cool and race car drivers were gods, with nerves of steel and balls to match….I’ve gone off topic…basically the cars on display were impressive…like crazy impressive
As if one icon wasn’t enough, checking the adjacent hanger entrance stretching across the floor for what seemed like 20 feet was of course a super rare Jaguar XJ220! With crazy aero inspired sleek lines and an overall presence that screamed 90’s, it was perfect. The dash was grey and horrifically dated and the rear diffuser looked about as street legal as a road trip to Worthersee, however, the 3.5 litre twin turbo V6 sitting pretty behind the cockpit, that looked just fine!
And the day just continued to turn up surprises one after the other, the site itself is huge as I mentioned, it’s an old RAF base so the array of ginormous rusting hangers is endless but what’s really cool is that in between them you have lots of independent workshops where companies are still doing stuff the old way restoring classic cars and bringing life back to the site and the UK car industry! Need a hand beaten passenger ally wing for a D-Type Jag you could probably get it made here by someone called Colin with a moustache and a coffee cup covered in cooper grease…nice!
Back to the cars on display we had it all from a row of old Alpines we then turned to a rally spec Audi Quattro then onto a stunning Mercedes 300SL Gullwing and so on and so on I urge you to keep an eye out for the next event on the calendar!
We even saw a familiar body outline of a Supercar Killer we did a feature on (see link here) the humble Lotus Carlton.
Once we had done meandering through the outside spaces we headed into the main hanger where Petrolicious were displaying some of their award winning short automotive films on a large projector they even had some of the cars dotted around allowing you to watch the films and then get a closer look around the car in question (very cool).
With the day drawing to a close we went for one last walk of the car park before heading back, completely blown away by the quality and variety of the show as you can see by the photos here.
Congratulations to the organisers for putting on a great first event here at Bicester and I will certainly be returning next year! Below is the full album for the day.
Words & Photos Nick Simmo
