The Queen's English Car Show – English Cars But Thankfully No English Weather

Copyright, 2012 Rob Emslie

God actually did save the Queen yesterday – or at least Mother Nature did, keeping the annual Queen’s English Car Show from being washed out for a second year in a row. This time, the unseasonable rains ended a day earlier, making St. Paddy’s day wet with something other than just green beer and delicious Irish whiskey. Sunday dawned with threatening skies, but the clouds kindly kept their precipitation to themselves, allowing for the grass at Van Nuys’ Woodley Park to be wetted only by the copious amounts of Castrol a show of British cars affords. 

Of course not everyone was confident that the forecast would be wrong (it called for 40% chance of showers right through the show, thanks Johnny Mountain!) and so the turnout was in the dozens rather than the hundreds. Still, it was a great show and there were plenty of Morgans in the mud, MGs in the muck, Sunbeams in the sludge, and Loti in the loam. There were even some amazing cars there, alone worth the free price of admission. One such was a Morris Minor that was an odd and wonderful melding of four-door and wood paneled Traveller that must be seen to be believed. 

And see it you will, along with a bunch of other English iron whose owners braved the threat of inclement weather to make the trek to the show. That included a gentleman who drove his ’74 Jensen Healey all the way from Palm Springs, encountering snow along the way, but preferring – in the best British tradition – to keep both the top and the pedal down. Check out my mad photography skills in the slide show subordinate to these very words, it’ll be just like you were there, just without having to scrape the dried mud from the treads of your sneakers.

 

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