Chris Sheldrake the Wessex RREC editor tells the story of how a quick visit to The Auto Moto Rétro classic car show on the way back from a touring holiday in Italy resulted in an invite to France's 2nd largest Classic car show.

“Last year we planned to visit the Auto Moto Rétro on the way back from a touring holiday to the Italian Lakes. Most UK marques were represented by their French clubs, but there was no Rolls-Royce of Bentley presence. I visited the organiser’s office and was told that nobody had ever suggested coming!  As Wessex (south coast of England) is the closest UK Section to Rouen (Normandy), I offered to bring over some cars and was surprised at the enthusiasm demonstrated by the organisers. 

Within days, we had established email correspondence, primarily using Google Translate to overcome my lack of French. The result was an invitation to bring five or six cars to display and we would be their guests. We were given a generous stand in the main hall, together with electricity and carpet. Talking to our committee, we decided that we should take Rolls-Royces only, as we could not tell the story of both marques with just six cars. It proved surprisingly difficult to assemble six suitable cars, but after months of talking, we finally established the cars that could tell the story of Rolls-Royce over more than 100 years.

These were; A 1925 20hp Open Tourer of Ian Stanbridge (albeit with a more modern body ) 1926 Phantom belonging to David and Barbara Miles, 1955 Silver Dawn (my own, newly repainted )  1975 Corniche sympathetically owned and restored by Richard Goodman, 1998 Silver Seraph, quite the best I have ever seen, owned by David Thomas and finally, Steve Drewitt, owner of Silver Lady Services in Bournemouth, and his son Harry offered to bring their 2007 Phantom 7.

We decided to have a theme for the stand of an English Country Picnic loosely based on the 1930s. Several of our team enthusiastically dressed for the occasion, especially the ladies, and we must single out Dave Thomas for his genuine 1930s waistcoat, hat. silk tie and Rolls-Royce engraved gold pocket watch! Members provided props such as a wind-up gramophone, elegant tea sets and Picnic Hampers. We even had a cocktail shaker and glasses on one car’s fold-down table.

The show opened at 9am on Saturday but we arrived at 8am, by which time there was already an enthusiastic crowd queuing to get in. Over the weekend, the number of visitors was impressive, but this was unsurprising as the Auto Retro Moto Rouen is such a large and important show in France. During the morning we were introduced to M. Pierre Fillon, President of the whole ACO. It was the first time he has visited the show, and evidently, he had asked especially to visit our stand. He seemed genuinely pleased with what he saw.

Unsurprisingly, 80% of the photographs taken were of David and Barbara Miles’ magnificent 1926 Phantom Open Tourer. But visitors were very impressed by the high standard of all the cars. After the first hour, we had noticed that few people ventured onto the stand, so we widened the entrance and went out of our way to invite them on to look around. It worked! Visitors we spoke to frequently asked how we had transported the cars to the show. They were genuinely astonished to hear that the three older cars, combined age 265 years, had all been driven down under their own steam!

Thanks to everyone to our new friends at the ACO and all those who contributed to the event and particularly those Wessex Section members who worked so hard on the stand over both days. All have said they want to return next year!

Read the full story at https://rrecwessex.org.uk/