"I didn't expect this at all, I'm still taking it in. I wasn't going to enter, but my pals talked me into it, and the car got in. I was over the moon, and then it won... It's unreal."
Concours de l'Ordinaire winner Sam Allan's Vauxhall Astra Merit was once the very definition of street furniture - the sort of car most concours d'élégance entrants would have ignored as they left the show in their Pourtout-bodied Delages. Hagerty's Festival of the Unexceptional, now in its eighth iteration, aims to redress the balance, promoting the cars that were once everywhere, but are now nowhere to be found - cars that, to mangle a phrase from Max Beerbohm's Zuleika Dobson, were worthy of the background.
Some 50 humble survivors were selected for concours appraisal; any run-of-the-mill car qualified, provided it was built between 1967 and 1997. A Ford Ka and Renault Mégane Scénic appeared on the lawn for the first time, alongside storied British entries including the last-known Morris Marina built, and an ex-Royal Mail Austin Maestro City 500 van - one that was unfortunately stolen a day after restoration and used in a ram-raid.
The fastest and flashiest classics have events of their own in which they and their owners attend. The Festival of the Unexceptional, which took place in the grounds of Lincolnshire's Grimsthorpe Castle on 30 July, has its focus firmly on the loss-leaders that propped up the other end of the range.
Allan, a 31-year-old driving instructor from Edinburgh, spotted his winning Astra, a 1.4-litre, 59bhp base model, parked across from his valeting business in 2012. Owned via a Motability scheme by an elderly gentleman who garaged and waxed it, the car got his attention.
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