It’s Stafford SHOWTIME!
Welcome to The 38th Carole Nash International Classic MotorCycle Show, the greatest motorcycle show on earth.
It really stopped me in my tracks when I typed ‘38th’ just now. How did all those years pass by so quickly? It’s almost certain that we have visitors to the show this weekend who weren’t even born when founding father Alan Whitehead launched the very first Classic Bike Show, as it was then known.
To put the changes in our hobby since then into perspective let’s assume you had been around long enough to have owned a motorcycle or two – hopefully you still do. If you were 16 or more, what were you riding when the show was launched? Hopefully that has got you thinking.
It certainly did me. I was at that very first show at Manchester’s Belle Vue, now long since demolished, and even had a bike on display too, my Seeley G50. At that time my then regular race bike was only 10 years old! Classic indeed!
Which of course got me thinking about some of the other machinery in my shed, which now enjoys that revered status and was, like me, a lot younger back then? My oldest steed, my much loved Rudge Rapid, was only 41 years old back then, hardly ancient, and my Ducati TT2, now very much a sought-after classic, was still four years away from being created. All of which tells us what a man of vision our founder was, either that or he had a load of old motorcycles in his shed and was looking for somewhere to offload them.
How things have changed in those 38 years. Surely Alan Whitehead could never have imagined the huge event we are all enjoying this weekend. Or that there would be a whole industry built around what was a relatively cheap hobby, and is now in many ways just as large and important as the British motorcycle industry that was, which at that time was staggering towards its painful death.
Most importantly what it does show is that the whole old bike movement has a long and rosy future ahead of it. Don’t let anyone tell you there aren’t any classic projects left to discover, or that restoring a more modern machine with all its complex electronics is impossible. History is a moving feast.
The 38th Carole Nash Classic MotorCycle Show WILL be the best in its 38 year history, with all the right component parts in place for an unforgettable weekend! You heard it here first.
And if it turns out to be your first visit to the show on your 2018 Yamasaki or Hondumph, just think, in a very short space of time you could be exhibiting it at the 48th Carole Nash Classic MotorCycle Show.
Malc Wheeler