Silly me, I arrived two days too late. As I walked up and down Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Boulevard in Downtown Dubai, the annual Emirates Classic Car Festival was definitely lacking something.
This was its eighth iteration, but in previous years, I had managed to be there on “the day” – the one when cars were awarded for their various categories, and the red carpet was rolled out for the winners. Two days later, on a hot Sunday afternoon, there were three distinct things lacking: a festival atmosphere of any kind, any signs of an organising team and, ah yes, the main winners – the classics that people might actually want to see.
It turns out that the owners and custodians of the really valuable machinery don’t want their cars left outdoors for four days in a public space with no real security – and who can blame them? So we were left with 350-odd cars in varying states of repair, with probably half being American.
Exhibits were covered in dust, and a vintage Rolls-Royce even sat forlornly on flat tyres as though awaiting rescue from some benevolent benefactor. Some cars needed restoring from the ground up; some were modified to such an extent they should have been at a custom-car show. There seemed to be no order to the exhibits, no grouping together of pre-war, post-war, American, European or other categories you would normally find at such shows.
But my biggest bugbear of all is the fact that only one car out of the hundreds there had any information on it displayed (and even then, some of it was inaccurate). Classic cars are fascinating relics of the past. Many have been in existence for 100 years or more. So there’s a hunger for information about them that, this time around at least, went completely unsatisfied.
How long have these cars been here? Who imported them and why? Do they form part of a collection? Were they restored here or elsewhere? Are they original? Do they have any famous owners in the logbook? What are they worth? Have they ever taken part in motor racing or other noteworthy activities? How many others like them are in the UAE? Someone, somewhere, has the answers to all these questions.
As a classic-car obsessive I don’t think I will attend again. The 25 award winners should be on display for the duration of the festival, even if that means being housed under something offering more protection than a makeshift tent, and there should be information on their histories, to bring to life some of the stories these cars would no doubt tell if they could.
There needs to be stricter criteria for entry, too, if we’re to take this event seriously. And there needs to be someone checking tyres are inflated and dust is removed – otherwise we’re left with a display of old-timers that ultimately look past their best.
The standard of cars in this part of the world is beyond reproach, but we now need a show that does them justice – perhaps a Concours d’Elegance event similar to California’s Pebble Beach or Italy’s Villa d’Este. Both of those get the balance right, and are able to include new metal, too, such as concept cars and prototypes. They’re properly organised, judged independently by renowned experts, and attract tens of thousands of visitors from all over the world. Thinking about it, I might just get the ball rolling myself.
