Vintage at the Verzons

So well-supported have the VSCC New Year’s Day assemblies at The Verzons Hotel near Ledbury been that the organiser, Mark Garfitt, has instituted a similar Sunday Serendipity there. It was fun in the sun on August 20. The grass verges of the A438 were less lined with visitors’ modern cars and the car park was more orderly than on cold winter occasions, but there was much to see and photograph.

To list all the cars that qualified for the vintage park is unnecessary. But mention must be made of Maurice Parry’s Lancia Astura dh coupe, immaculate both externally and beneath the bonnet, the body home-made. It fooled me to the extent of enquiring which coachbuilder had made it. Most commendable. Several equally immaculate 12/50 Alvises reminded one that at last the Register has come up with an enlarged and very fine edition of the original Hull/Johnson book about these cars. Of fast machinery there were Lord Raglan’s well-known Type 51 Bugatti and a Type 35. A neat Bertelli Aston Martin was supported (not literally, although a free bottle of Weston’s cider was handed out to everyone) by a side-valve B&M Aston-Martin.

All the popular makes were paraded — MG, Frazer Nash, Lagonda, 328 BMW, Morgan, Austin, etc. I noted an Invicta dh coupe, a Coatalen Sunbeam, an early Roesch 14/45 Talbot, an HE, P111 and 20hp Rolls-Royces, Ian Williamson’s “Cream Cracker” MG, a PA/PB MG, an EMW, a Wolseley Hornet Special and a modestly-parked Packard saloon. The “Regency Rhythm” band played, led by Ian Rendall, Weston’s had their bull-nose Morris Cowley and Ford Thames vans on display, and everyone seemed to be enjoying Garfitt’s informal motor feast.