Out & About – Meet-Up at Bentwaters & The Long Shop Museum Autojumble

This past Saturday, the 25^th, was the planned Bridge Classic Cars Meet-Up and The Long Shop Museum Autojumble at Bentwaters Parks here in Suffolk. A coming together of classic cars and motorcycles with the world of vintage parts and automobilia.

The Bridge Classic Cars team arrived early at our storage facility, The Hangar. As we moved the cars from under the car covers, The Long Shop team began to arrive shortly before the first vendors got on site.

As the sun began to warm up the Suffolk air, the first classics came into sight. The plan was that Bridge Classic Cars would hold a free meet-up and the £5 Autojumble entry to The Long Shop Museum would go to help fund their restoration of a 1937 Buick at their Leiston workshops. As the sides of the airfield began to fill up with classics and modern cars alike, the steady flow of people back and forth from the Autojumble and into our Hangar grew.

We had put all of our projects and storage cars on display for everyone to see inside the hangar along with a host of our latest competition cars just outside, joining in with the growing crowd of vintage metal. The 1957 MG A Roadster and 1993 Land Rover Defender were in pride of place and were joined by a previous winner! The 1975 Ford Escort RS Mexico Recreation, which was won by Chris in November last year made its first outing of the year to come and meet up with us and everyone else.

The Autojumble was a mixture of parts and automobilia. From vintage garage signs to new shiny hardware, new motorcycle fairings to Victorian woodworking tools and everything in between. From one end to another, people trade parts for pieces and bought those rare gems that only come about with something like an Autojumble. Families came out to see, the older generation of petrolhead passing down the knowledge to those just beginning their journey into a bygone era.

The stream of cars into the classic meet-up was steady, with some leaving and immediately something was there to take its place. From classic Bentleys to a 1980s Nissan Micra. The wonderful part about all of this is the variety that you see and something like an open meet-up.

As the clock approached mid-day, the crowds began to thin. Other shows, other plans and other commitments saw the gatherings of classics disperse and it was time for the Bridge team to begin putting all of our project and storage cars back inside under their covers.