Le Mans Classic – my favourite event on the classic calendar without doubt and this year’s was no exception.
I’ve been fortunate to only miss one since the classic event at La Sarthe began in 2002 and none have disappointed.
Even this year’s mixed bag of baking sun and torrential downpours could be viewed in a positive light: at least I didn’t spend my time wandering around in the usual dehydrated haze attempting not to end up with third degree burns on the top of my ginger bonce.
However, the one thing that did cause me some degree of angst was my steed for the weekend. I’ve been to Le Mans twice in the MGB, once in my Porsche 912 and once in the SIIA Land-Rover.
After the sedate pace of the Landie in 2010 however, I was actually looking forward to a slightly more spirited drive by taking the Scimitar GTE. Even spending the hours before making my way to the ferry driving a 289 AC Cobra on a C&SC shoot couldn’t dampen my enthusiasm for my first European outing in the Reliant.
In fact, it was only when we reached Le Mans that my chosen classic started to cause me some trouble… and it wasn’t even anything to do with the car itself.
As I watched all sorts of wonderful and varied machinery enter the campsite – bona fide vintage tourers, bare-aluminium specials with spitting exhausts and classic icons from all decades – I began to yearn for something a bit older, which immediately brought my thoughts back to the AC Buckland sitting in my father-in-law’s garage awaiting my attention.
