A visit to Ormskirk
Ormskirk is a small market town in Lancashire. Each year the town hosts its Motorfest, this is a free motoring event using the town centre and park for vehicle display.
This event is well supported and hosts a great variety of cars and motorbikes.
What makes the event special is the afternoon drive of the display vehicles around the town's little ring road. The road has dips, hills, corners and curves, with large crowds lining the barriers cheering the drivers on to make some noise!
Cars and bikes are arranged into groups, all do a 4 lap circuit, so although the parade is carefully controlled, a little noise based action can be enjoyed.
I took our Evo2, so I gave it a good clean and polish the day before.
I used that paintwork coloured car polish, after a washing I find the paint-coloured polish gives a good result.
I used my Aldi Sonic scrubber on the wheels. This scrubber is like a big electric toothbrush, and is ideal for cleaning a Delta's sharp cornered alloys. The scrubber was £2.99 or so at Aldi, but like the jumble sale Aldi is, I've never seen one since.
Some time ago, I bought a nice Derby green Evo1. The seller kindly gave me some spare parts, and a red elephant! This elephant came to the show with me, its job this day was to hide one of the Delta's Japanese cut out speaker holes!
Sonic Scrubber in action
Our Delta was a popular exhibit, I had it well locked up. I was keeping an eye on the rear wiper arm cover, you never know! The lovely Delta curves, and the shiny original factory paintwork invited touching. So a good clean will be required after the show.
A popular exhibit
Who new that 240Zs did this!
These are a great looking car, and now very valuable. This lovely example of the ground breaking Datsun has been repainted, but remains very original. It's a UK supplied car, the gentleman having owned it since new.
This wonderful access flap was a surprise, although it looks like a perfect rust trap!
A lovely flap!
Some good Italian motors were on display, but only my Evo and this Fulvia flying the Lancia flag this year.
The Fulvia was a lovely car, this being one of a small number painted metallic blue at the factory. As a Fulvia S, it has an alloy bonnet, boot lid and doors, for lightness, 2 twin choke Solexes and warmer cams for more go.
The narrow angle V4 is a great example of Italian creative design. The quality alloy castings include a lovely cast cooling fan and its support pillar.
The Fulvia has a mechanical fuel pump, with a switchable electric pump for starting up, and a bit more go.
A Fiat 600 with an olive oil can catch tank, an Alfa showing its lovely pipes, and a Ferrari caught my eye. However, closer inspection showed the Ferrari was a replica, fitted with a Renault Alpine V6.
The good old days!
£2,000,000 if it was real!
A large selection of stock cars was on show, brightly coloured with lively signwriting. Some of the cars were current competitors, others antiques. When they started up for the display laps though, those antiques sounded the business!
Many are fitted with big American V8s, with their open pipes the cars made the buildings shake.
This AC Cobra Daytona was daringly displayed in 'Fresh off the building site' condition. It would be interesting to see some cars displayed in a less polished state, but who would dare do it on the day? I would not think of displaying my car dirty, but I'd let someone else do it!
A bit too good for mud-plugging
Our turn came for the parade laps, I was parked next to my friend's TVR, this has a Chevy V8 with switchable open exhausts. The switch flaps were not closing properly, so that car was loud!
I couldn't hear if my Evo had started, I couldn't even hear the starter motor! On the road we had another TVR behind
us, so it was noisy out there. We all made the laps without problems, then parked up again and discussed the two TVR's overheating and other problems.
The Motorfest at Ormskirk is a happy, well organised event. All kinds of motor vehicles are displayed, and their owners happy to chat. It's well worth a visit.
Click to visit Motorfest site