Just in case you didn’t know (or as a reminder if you did), this Sunday sees the VBOA/Vauxhall Heritage Centre open day in Luton, I’ll be going and I’ll write a post about how it went next week.
For those readers that don’t know, the Heritage Centre is the Vauxhall museum on the Griffin House site - Vauxhall’s UK Head Office. The centre is great and well worth a visit. It is rarely open to the public so you have to take advantage of the opportunities when they arise – it’s free to look around too.
Many moons ago, I used to work at Griffin House; the Heritage Centre was my lunchtime home and Bernard Ridgeley and Ray Cooper, the curators of the time, were good company.
It’s been a few years since my last visit and so I am looking forward to making the trip. Hopefully the weather will present much less of a challenge than it did at Billing Aquadrome in July – you can read about that in an earlier article.
Moving on to the next topic of this post; having recently acquired two VBOA plaques from past All Vauxhall Car Club Rallies/VBOA National Days and thinking that my plaque collection was complete, I had a crisis of confidence about whether 1996 or 1997 was my first year of attendance.
I had to resort to photograph comparison with another of my classic Vauxhall enthusiast friends to get to the bottom of the issue. We managed to prove that 1996 was indeed my first year of attendance and whilst that was good to resolve, it also proved that I was definitely an attendance plaque down from having a complete set. Damn!
The OMOC came through for me with plaques for 1997 and 2012 but I am not sure that I’ll be lucky enough to get a 1996 plastic plaque via the excellent Paul Brennecker; so a new quest is now on.
Usefully, Gary Martin was able to send me an image of the item I am now on the lookout for. It predates the VBOA’s organisation of the annual rally (it started managing it in 1997) and so the VBOA won’t be able to help. The individual car clubs might be able to assist but it will take some effort to liaise with them all. This could take some time – will the internet prove its worth this time?
Who knows - I’ll update you if I am successful.
In the meantime, in the unlikely event that you have a spare one of these things that you’ve kept for 16 years thinking that someone will want it – you have just found your man.
And, maybe I’ll see you in Luton on Sunday! Fingers crossed the rain stays away.
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For those readers that don’t know, the Heritage Centre is the Vauxhall museum on the Griffin House site - Vauxhall’s UK Head Office. The centre is great and well worth a visit. It is rarely open to the public so you have to take advantage of the opportunities when they arise – it’s free to look around too.
Many moons ago, I used to work at Griffin House; the Heritage Centre was my lunchtime home and Bernard Ridgeley and Ray Cooper, the curators of the time, were good company.
It’s been a few years since my last visit and so I am looking forward to making the trip. Hopefully the weather will present much less of a challenge than it did at Billing Aquadrome in July – you can read about that in an earlier article.
Moving on to the next topic of this post; having recently acquired two VBOA plaques from past All Vauxhall Car Club Rallies/VBOA National Days and thinking that my plaque collection was complete, I had a crisis of confidence about whether 1996 or 1997 was my first year of attendance.
I had to resort to photograph comparison with another of my classic Vauxhall enthusiast friends to get to the bottom of the issue. We managed to prove that 1996 was indeed my first year of attendance and whilst that was good to resolve, it also proved that I was definitely an attendance plaque down from having a complete set. Damn!
The OMOC came through for me with plaques for 1997 and 2012 but I am not sure that I’ll be lucky enough to get a 1996 plastic plaque via the excellent Paul Brennecker; so a new quest is now on.
Usefully, Gary Martin was able to send me an image of the item I am now on the lookout for. It predates the VBOA’s organisation of the annual rally (it started managing it in 1997) and so the VBOA won’t be able to help. The individual car clubs might be able to assist but it will take some effort to liaise with them all. This could take some time – will the internet prove its worth this time?
Who knows - I’ll update you if I am successful.
In the meantime, in the unlikely event that you have a spare one of these things that you’ve kept for 16 years thinking that someone will want it – you have just found your man.
And, maybe I’ll see you in Luton on Sunday! Fingers crossed the rain stays away.
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