Paul Burke heads to the Chelsea Cruise - and back to the golden age of classic cars
Turn the ignition, put the car into reverse and let’s go back to a recent but very different time. A time when driving was seen as a pleasure, a pastime and very often, a hobby. A time when every high street had a motor spares shop and the nation revved to the sound of Sunday morning mechanics. Some were simply replacing their spark plugs, changing their oil filters and tuning their carburettors but many went much further. They were customising once humble vehicles into jacked-up, re-sprayed, race-tuned hot rods.
When I was a teenager, classic and custom car culture was huge and despite every official attempt to undermine it, it just keeps rolling on.
For proof, make your way to Chelsea tomorrow night because on the last Saturday of every month, the Chelsea Cruise is a sight to behold.
Gorgeous old motors, either beautifully customised or lovingly restored, parade along the King's Road, over Chelsea Bridge and into Battersea Park. There they'll be lined up with their owners standing proudly beside open bonnets and gleaming chrome.
The Chelsea Cruise harks back to a time when passing your driving test was far more significant than it is now. It was the start of your real-life journey to independence and adulthood. A journey where you were finally free to determine your own route and control your own destiny.
Since then, successive governments and local councils have been grimly determined to make driving as unappealing as possible to young people. You have to feel sorry for them - they’ve only known 20 mph limits, bumps, bollards and bus lanes. They’ve grown up under the constant surveillance of a sinister network of cameras and have little idea of how enjoyable and liberating driving should be.
Individual mobility was perhaps man’s greatest achievement of the twentieth century, so it’s a crying shame that the authorities have so spitefully tried to spoil it in the twenty-first.
From the moment I was able to drive, I wanted to be part of the Chelsea Cruise and imagine that I was in a scene from American Graffiti. I quickly developed an almost narcotic addiction to the motoring section of the Exchange & Mart, chopping and changing Ford Escorts for Ford Cortinas. And Ford Cortinas for Ford Capris.
In one particular Cortina, I finally felt flash enough to join the pageant. It was a Mark III GXL in Coca Cola red with a black vinyl roof but even then I felt a sense of imposture. In the inky pages of the Exchange & Mart, Cortinas like mine weren’t exactly rare or expensive, though if I had it now, it would be one of the stars of the show. Old Fords could be repaired by anyone mechanically competent with a box of spanners and a socket set.
That’s no longer the case. Even the mechanically brilliant who could restore or customise an old car now need a computer to check the oil on a new one.
Though ironically, the fact that new cars are so indistinguishable and inaccessible has helped fuel the resurgence of Chelsea Cruise, along with the internet with its countless custom car websites. Enthusiasts realised that they were not alone and were able to coalesce into a huge and insanely passionate community.
They and their vehicles now gather in Chelsea and at similar events all over the country and each driver's pride and joy reminds you of that person’s individuality and ingenuity.
What each one of them has created is truly special and you don't have to be a petrol head to appreciate this. You don’t even have to drive to be moved by the sight of an immaculately restored car from your childhood and by all the memories it will instantly evoke.
I’ll be heading for the Chelsea Cruise tomorrow night because for me, it's on a par with visiting the National Gallery or Tate Modern.
In fact, it’s way better because each car is a work of art, a wonderful confluence of form and function. There's a reason why the late art critic Brian Sewell was a connoisseur of and why architectural guru Stephen Bayley still is.
It's the knowledge that our love of old cars – classic or customised – is an obsession that, if the Chelsea Cruise is anything to go by, will never run out of road.
