WHAT MAKES A CAR EXCEPTIONALLY UNEXCEPTIONAL?

It's not as easy as you might think to find a car that will woo the judges at the Festival of the Unexceptional. Alex Wolstenholme shadows them to learn the formula for success

- Alex Wolstenholme

It's a warm summer's day and the field I'm standing in is full of hubcaps, big black plastic bumpers, funky carpets and colourful fabrics. Badges like Austin, Daihatsu, Rover and Daewoo feature heavily and there's a slight whiff of chips in the air.

I could be in a McDonald's car park in the late 1990s-back when everything was a bit brighter and Ronald McDonald's colourful tones hadn't been phased out in favour of grey minimalism. And it's not just fast food chains that seem a bit more grey these days. Take a look at an online car configurator and you'll be overwhelmed by a sea of grey, or other equally dull hues.

The Festival of the Unexceptional (FotU) is an automotive antidote to this. It's all about bringing back the joys of average motoring life from the relatively recent past, when we remember things being taken less seriously. Gone are aggressive grilles, alphanumeric model titles and monotone design, replaced by cutesy faces, fun names and that brilliantly 1990s shade of turquoise.

FotU was created to celebrate the forgotten and currently unloved cars facing extinction. Judge Jon Bentley explained: "The whole point of the show is cars being preserved which are very ordinary. You wouldn't normally think to preserve them, so they just tend to quietly disappear. But luckily there are groups of enthusiastic people who love to preserve all these things."

Christopher Lloyd's Daewoo Lanos is a great example. It's just one of five left, and he recently spent many times its value respraying its bright non-metallic 'Super Red' paint. But when asked how much recognition he gets on the road for his efforts, Lloyd instantly replied: "None whatsoever.""

The event features a line-up of 50 cars selected for a judged concours, with contenders ranging from a 1970s Triumph Toledo to a 1998 Renault Clio, and visitors are welcome to park their own unexceptional cars for everyone else to admire.