Newby Hall & Gardens – Sportscars in the Park ’19

Being in the northern part of England, major automotive events are few and far between, so I make do with what we get in the Yorkshire locale. Throughout the UK, an abundance of country estates exist that were build hundreds of years ago but still remain intact and well maintained. These places make for perfect venues for car gatherings, due to the wealth of land surrounding the house grounds.

I made a first-time escape from the cramped city of Bradford and ventured to Ripon, North Yorkshire, to check out an array of both classic and modern metal. Take a look through and see if any of your poster heroes make an appearance…

The Shelby/AC Cobra is an eternally iconic muscle car. I admire its unorthodox persona. When you think ‘American muscle’, Camaro or Mustang probably springs to mind, but without a doubt an open-top ‘roadster’ is the last association the average person would make. I am unsure about this white on blue car in particular, in terms of its genuinity, but its a classic eye-catcher whatever the case.

Across the Ford pond, some Euro-centric models made an appearance in the hundreds, mostly consisting of hot Fiestas and Focuses, but I spotted this F.R.P. parked up isolating itself from the cookie-cutter hatchbacks. It is easy to see these become cult classic in the near future, a very rare one at that with only 500 produced and God knows how many still intact due to the chassis being prone to corrosion. This Melina Blue car was in pretty decent nick though.

I am certain this was the first time I witnessed pretty much all models of TVR in once place at the same time. These were the cars that actually made me proud to be a British citizen when I initially encountered them in the virtual showroom on Gran Turismo 3, available in a spectrum of extraterrestrial colour options. All that was missing to complete the set was the monstrous Cerbera Speed Twelve.

We all want to see some domestic competition for the Mclaren and Aston Martin artillery. Jaguar are pretty stale now with only the F-Type offering thats more GT than ‘supercar’, which leaves Lotus with the duty of proving there’s more than tea and crumpets over here, and the new Project 130 on the horizon does look to be something special indeed.

Idenitity crisis?
Recognise this Elise?…
FixOrRepairDaily

Is this ‘panda’ rear mask a thing now, as there are more and more Audi A1/S1s adopting this aswell
Those diamond-cut face rollers pinched from the current-gen M3/M4 CS look right at home on the “old” E82 1 Series

Of course, my heart yearns for the Japanese automobile wherever I am, if you know me you know this is a fact. At the show, a Japanese display stand was set up, but it seemed to be swamped with S2000s and Subarus (which is not a bad thing) but most of them were stock apart from a A80 Supra and a couple of Prodrive P1 GC8 WRX STis. Most of these following shots were to be found mingling in the mix of vehicles in the area where allsorts could be found, which was cool because too much floorplan structure can be boring at times.

Toyota pulled off the bug-eye look the best with the T200 Celica.

All in all, it was a well put together event with all types of vehicles on show including some surprises here and there (see Countach?!). Hope you enjoyed the read, I find it hard to talk about any car that doesn’t hail from Japan so bare with me. I am someone who can appreciate cars from any region on this globe and I would say my taste is eclectic to be honest, but maybe a bit too much, I need to fokus on machines that talk to me. The next post will definitely lead in the direction that I want this site to go in, so stay tuned and share the word if some of what you saw in this post, or any of them for that matter, tickled your fancy.

This GC8 had the reddest paint I have ever seen on a 90’s Subaru (all 5 of them), this being a non-WRX UK model, its tidiness forced me to check up on the odometer…
~46,000 miles this had done, a car-park find I am glad I stumbled upon
Last but never least
Blown away by this white-on-white R32 GTR