Transatlantic 175 set the template for Liverpool car shows

AT LAST. After what feels like an eternity, Liverpool’s had a proper car show we could all enjoy!

I know that Transatlantic 175 – as a celebration of Merseyside’s maritime, rather than motoring, heritage – encompassed a weekend of events focusing on lots of things other than old cars. If you’d wandered down to the waterfront over the weekend, you’d have been greeted with music, vintage fashion and – rather more impressively – the imposing sight of the Queen Mary 2 looming over Liverpool’s waterfront.

But for me (and it seems, a couple of thousand others) the real highlight was seeing 200-odd cars, ranging from Austin Sevens to Aston Martin DB5s, dotted around in front of the Three Graces. Not only was it a wonderful sight to behold, but something long overdue.

For years, it’s been accepted wisdom that car shows are seas of Sunbeam Rapiers and folding chairs held in the grounds of stately homes and on village greens. Events like the ones at Tatton Park, Cholmondeley and – on a smaller scale, last weekend’s Lydiate show – are great are pulling in some very diverse old cars and the band of merry enthusiasts who support them (I should know – I’m one of them).

But big car events held in town and city centres have a different pull altogether – the power to draw huge throngs of car nuts onto the high streets. It’s the sort of thing that’d make Mary Portas don a set of driving goggles and hop into a vintage Bentley – thousands of people who love cars going to look at Astons and Ferraris, and then spending their hard-earned cash in the nearby shops afterwards.

The Manchester Classic Car Show, now in its third year, brings more than 9000 car nuts within a stone’s throw of the Trafford Centre. Bradford’s annual event – held in front of its Grade I-listed city hall – is a bustling event now in its tenth year. That’s before I get to the Regent Street Motor Show and how it conveniently gets thousands of shoppers onto the London thoroughfare just before Christmas. There was only one question I heard all the classic car owners asking at the Pier Head over the weekend. When’s it all happening again?

Transatlantic 175 set a template for something the powers-that-be should have done ages ago. Liverpool is a wonderful venue with a lot of car-making heritage – let’s have more of this sort of thing!

For more pictures from Transatlantic 175 see the 8 July 2015 issue of Classic Car Weekly

Classic cars sought for Liverpool heritage festival

ENTRIES are now open for the classic car cavalcade and motoring-themed display at Liverpool’s Transatlantic 175 festival on July 5.

While the parade through the city centre is limited to 175 vehicles, the accompanying Vintage On The Docks display will be open to classic owners across Sefton and West Lancashire. Classic cars which tie in with the event's transatlantic theme - particularly US icons - are particularly sought after by the show organisers.

Go to the event's website to find out how to get your application in.

Why the Transatlantic 175 classic car cavalcade will be a celebration of Scouse motoring

HERE’S a pub quiz question to test your motoring knowledge. What does the Range Rover Evoque have in common with the Triumph TR7, the BAC Mono and the Ford Anglia?

The answer – should you wish to try this one on your petrolhead pals – is they’ve all been bolted together just down the road in Liverpool. As were the Jaguar X-Type, the Land Rover Freelander, the Ford Escort and the Triumph Toledo for that matter.

We’ve been mass-producing motors on Merseyside since the 1960s, and yet these great industrial achievements have gone uncelebrated for decades. That’s why I was delighted to learn the other day that one of the star draws of Liverpool’s Transatlantic 175 festival in July is a cavalcade through the city centre of 175 classic cars and motorbikes, accompanied by a static display of motoring’s greatest hits on the Albert Dock. I can’t wait to see how this one pans out, because Merseyside’s been overdue a really big car event for decades.

The event’s organisers told me they’re looking for cars from across the North West which are either British or American and have “great stories to tell” –prototypes, one-offs, early models, that sort of thing – for the 5 July parade through the centre. While it’s still early days and applications have only just opened for the event, I reckon it’s got the potential to be a real hit because there are so many wonderful cars being enjoyed by car nuts across the North West.

Wouldn’t it be great to see one of the first Ford Anglias ever to roll off the Halewood production line take part in that parade, followed by a couple of the Formula One cars which fans of the Ormskirk MotorFest will be familiar with? You could stretch it out beyond Liverpool’s borders too; I’d love to see a Southport-crafted Vulcan, one of the Lotus Europas lovingly built in Banks or one of Ellesmere Port’s earliest Vauxhall Vivas winding their way past Liverpool’s landmarks.

That’s before I get onto the land speed record set in Southport by Sir Henry Segrave or the fact that Aintree is about so much more than horse racing – it’s where Sir Stirling Moss became the first Englishman to win a British Grand Prix! The North West has a wonderful motoring heritage and the Transatlantic 175 festival is the perfect occasion to share that with the world.

I’m really looking forward to hearing the noise of those 175 cars and bikes starting up as they get ready for the parade. See you there!

Liverpool car show axed

A new classic car show set to take place later this month has been axed.

The Liverpool Motor Show was set to attract a wide variety of classics and modern sports cars to Croxteth Hall Park on 25 May, but organisers Aintree Circuit Club said the event had been cancelled due to operational difficulties.

The afternoon event was due to feature a mix of the latest supercars, an extensive display of classic cars and a showing of historic fire engines among its attractions, and would have raised funds for the Woodlands Hospice Charitable Trust.



The club is now continuing with efforts to organise its flagship event, the Ormskirk Motorfest, which takes place on 24 August.

EXCLUSIVE: Drifting comes to Liverpool

A SPECTACULAR battle between two drifting supremos will take place in the heart of Liverpool later this month.

Life On Cars understands that TV production company Shine Films will be bringing two of the world's most sideways drivers, former British Champion, Steve Baggsy and the Japanese founder of the sport Keichii, known as the ‘Drift King’ (pictured above) to the Merseyside city to film a drifting sequence for a forthcoming documentary.

The sequence, which a source at the company said will be "quite a spectacular event for the motorsport fan", will be shot at the Pier Head between 6pm and 9pm on the evening of Tuesday, August 20. It is not the first time the city has been used for high-octane filming, with the makers of Fast and Furious Six using it to film a chase sequence.

The finished documentary is expected to be broadcast this December.