As the Federation of British Historic Vehicle Clubs starts delving our hobby to empower its elbow against the expenses cheats in parliament (OK, that's a bit strong, but I have to get your attention!), it got me wondering about the scale of our hobby. And more importantly, the difficult task that faces the FBHVC.
Tackling the latter issue first, the poor old Federation (a sort of kindly uncle watching over all of us, but armed with a baseball bat should anyone get threatening) has one hell of a fundamental dilemma. And that is that the bigger and more impressive the stats of classic car ownership and usage, the bigger the bat it carries, but the bigger the potential opposition it may stir up.
In an ideal world, the results would say that our hobby is a massive industry, generating squillions of pounds and vital to the national economy (which it is), but that no one actually uses the cars very much causing lots of nasty pollution or raising any road safety issues (which is rather less true, I hope).
Of course, they could exaggerate the figures (rather as some people might fiddle their expenses claims, there I go again), but they assure me that there is no need. And hats off to the Feds, so far they have managed this balancing act with great aplomb.
So, how big is our hobby-cum-industry? Well, the last big survey was in 2006 (with a supplement added in 2009) and the results, considering the Fed is the first to admit that given much of the trade's unwillingness to reveal its full income the numbers could be ridiculously conservative, are eye-opening. If you are not familiar with them, I just thought I would share a few, hopefully interesting, snippets about who we are, what we do and what we spend.
