The annual invasion of Harpenden Common took place on the evening of 28th July. This annual motoring extravaganza is truly a delight. A truly non-commercial venture, with organisers and participants doing their thing purely for fun.

This Tatra created a lot of interest Click Here for More about these interesting Cars	Just a few of the cars in Falcon's impressive display.
Three Wheelers Ancient and Modern

It’s organised by Peter Madden of the Rover P5 Owners Club and John Tibble, the landlord of The Carpenters Arm’s. The whole thing started in 1994 when they organised an impromptu picnic and 25 cars turned up. Pleased with their success they organised another one next year and there were 125 participants. By 2003 it was up to 1800 and the event was spewing onto the roadside and verges for a half mile radius.

The success has been it’s complete informality. There are no awards, classes or trade stands. If a club wants to put a show together they have to turn up together as there are no pre-assigned spaces. As it is a non-commercial event there is no expensive publicity campaign but this year there were some changes, borne out of the events success.

Permission to use the common had always been on the basis that it wouldn’t be used until the evening. However, as the event became more popular, so vehicles arrived earlier and earlier in the afternoon, because if you came to late you couldn’t get on and were relegated to roadside parking. Then there was the cruise element a drag racing as the evening went on!

So for 2004 participants had to pre-book, for the princely sum of a £2 charitable donation and there were dire warnings that the police were going to take a dim view of drag racing and excessive “cruising”. None of this stopped this year’s event being another outstanding success. The Common was absolutely packed with cars and bikes. In theory they have to be more than 20 years old but more modern “interesting” vehicles are allowed on so there were plenty of Kit Cars and an alarming number of Dodge Vipers amongst the Austin Sevens!

Falcon had arranged to be together which meant arriving at the same time via a short cruise from the A5 Truck Stop. We had a nice selection of cars and Tom Goggin had rigged up a Generator and TV to show Video’s, which attracted a lot of interest. As to our cars it was inevitably the MGeetle that stole the show. Dave Nash has really got his creation looking very nice with a really tidy engine bay which now comes complete with a plumbed in fire extinguisher system. It was very interesting to listen to the questions, the most common being why! Most people thought Dave’s car was an MGB with a Beetle engine but it’s more a Beetle with an MGB body! The rear engined theme continued elsewhere with a nice display of three Tatra’s, click here for more.

Click Here for the Classics on the Common Web Site

 

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