I got to the Ace Café at StoneBridge on London’s North Circular road early as I thought it might be busy, but it wasn’t. The majority of cars seemed to be TRs. I do like the early styling but think the TR6, TR7 and TR8s are ugly. Some nice bikes arrived during the morning, then later in the day some Dolomites turned up. There were a couple of clean old Fords parked out the front in the road and a Daimler Dart in the car park. My fuel injection man also turned up in his Stag. There were a few of them there which was a surprise as it looked cloudy at times and we joke you can tell what the weather is going to be like by the amount of Stags that turn up.
Shame there were only 3 of the 2000 range there –and one of those was mine. The blue PI estate has had just one owner from new. When he collected it from the showroom he paid an extra £1.47 for 4 gallons of petrol. That wouldn’t buy you much more than a litre these days. The other was a brown 2000 saloon. It looked familiar -turned out it was once owned by James May, (“Captain Slow” from the Top Gear TV series). It‘s a very clean car, as suits his TV personality. A few people took photos of mine but because it doesn’t have any badges you could see they were puzzled about which model it was. Those I spoke to about it were pleased that at least it was being used and not a concourse car wrapped up in cotton wool. I don’t think that’s ever gonna happen!

-Renegade