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Visit to the Massive Classic Car Show | Techno Classica, Essen, Germany

12th April 2024, 17:00 by Brij Gawde

I must have visited it at least 15 times over the last 30 years.

BHPian Jeroen recently shared this with other enthusiasts.

I have been visiting classic car shows all over Europe. One of my favourite shows is the Techno Classica in Essen, Germany. I must have visited it at least 15 times over the last 30 years. Often with my best friend and spanner mate Peter.

We were always under the impression that Techno Classica is the largest Classic car show in Europe. We found out we were wrong and we will make sure to visit the largest classic car show in Europe this year too. More about that later.

We used to drive up and down in a single day. Essen isn't all that far. But these days, Peter lives an hour and a half drive from us and from us, it is still another 2-hour drive to Essen. So Peter comes and stays with us on Thursday evening. We book a hotel for the Friday evening. So we can take our time at the exhibition, we don't need to worry about driving home in rush hour. After we are done at the exhibition we drive to our hotel, freshen up. We get some drinks and a nice meal. On Saturday morning we drive home, after breakfast at the hotel, at our leisure.

On Friday morning we got up early and hit the road on Friday morning between 07-07.30. With one coffee stop on the Autobahn that gets us to the exhibition centre around 09.30. Depending on traffic. Although ze Germans organise these things extremely well, the exhibition centre is almost in the centre of Essen and you might find yourself queuing for 30-40 minutes before being able to park your car. Parking the car is never a problem, lots of space. But the roads to the parking centre clog up.

This exhibition is huge. You could visit and see very different cars from the ones we looked at.

There are thousands of cars, so this is just a small collection.

Car stands are a mix of commercial enterprises and classic car clubs. This is an excellent formula for these events. The clubs pay a largely reduced tariff for their stand. But lots of car club member like to visit their club stands at exhibitions such as these. So the whole event gets a lot of PR and advertisement via the classic car club channels.

This was the very first car we bumped into a; BMW Isetta. Gives a different meaning to "front door"! Note the tasteful carpet!

Next, we bumbed into this soft top RX7 with a Wankelengine. Both Peter and I are quite familiar with the RX7. But even Peter, who makes a living valuing classic cars, had never come across or even heard about the softtop version!

Very rare, only 47 were made!

If you have been into the (original) Mini, you will have seen them with just about every modification possible. Some were very nice, some not so nice. The first time we came across a mini with Gullwing doors! As far as we are concerned the Jury is still out on this modification!

The VW Beetle has always been a hugely popular Classic car. There are still tens of thousands of them out there. Spare parts availability is excellent, probably better than when these cars were still produced—easy cars to work on and restore. Even so, they command a very hefty price these days.

Euro 89500 for this:

This is an original 1951 Beetle with a split rear window. Yours for Euro 69900

These days more and more YoungTimers make it into these classic car shows. Nothing wrong with YoungTimers. But they should not overdo it. This is a show about classic cars. Although there is no formal definition of what constitutes a classic car, the consensus, sort of, means it needs to be at least 25-30 years old.

This Mercedes is only 10 years old. So it is not even a YoungTimer really! Only 35K kilometres on the clock, 6,2l V8 for only euro 650000!

A pretty cool car too, Renault 5 turbo! The proverbial pocket rocket. A friend of mine had one of these and took it to the circuit of Zandvoort in the Netherlands. Crashed and totalled it within minutes!! Just because you can afford one of these cars, doesn't mean you know how to drive them!

Of course, when you visit one of the top classic car shows in the world, you expect more classic Ferraris than you can shake a stick at. We were not disappointed. Gorgeous 1956 Ferrari 250 GT Boanao, only 36K on the clock. The asking price is just under 1.3 million euros!

I always like this 1970 Mazda Cosmo 110 S Coupe. Euro 135000

Those of you who have followed some of my posts know I love old vintage tractors. The Lamborghini folks had brought some very nice ones!!

Of course, there were some Italian supercars as well.

I must admit, in this red, I initially failed to recognize it. I don't think red does this car any justice. For a supercar, it is surprisingly small too!

Imagine sitting here, in short sleeves, foot down, doing well over 330 km/h on the Autobahn!

Not sure why, but there were a lot of Mercedes 190SL and 300SL about.

Look at this! Did you know Fiat made stunning cars like this in the past? A 1954 Fiat 8V. Only 114 were built. Just over a million Euros.

The Jaguar E-type is, no doubt, a true iconic classic car. Although not everybody agrees. For some, the owners just want to advertise something about the size of some of their limbs, so to speak.Never understood that.

And then Austin Powell came along. Yeah, Baby get a load of my mojo!!

Here in Europe, classic car shows will have primarily European and some Japanese cars. There are always some American cars as well of course.

Like this 1962 Studebaker Avanti. 300 HP V8 supercharged. An extremely rare car these days. Not pretty perhaps, but still very rare!

Here is another Supercar. A 1992 Jaguar XJ220 undergoing a full re-commissioning by Jaguar Essen. Done less than 850 kilometers?! Only 275 of these XJ220 were produced.

The engine is still out! Impressive set-up.

There were also a lot of Citroen DS about.

We came across this one, that had a couple of pretty special options installed.

Look at this dashboard. It is known as the Jagear Tableau. All instruments were supplied by Jaeger!!

Custom-made radio fits the shape of the dashboard!

Finally an Alfa Romeo Spider. In this case, my not-so-favourite is Series 4. The last of the famous 105/115 series Spiders. Ridiculous asking price of euro 30000.