Bromley Pageant

The Bromley Pageant of motoring is the Worlds biggest one-day car show and has been attended by the Panther Car Club for the last 23 years. This year we took one of the special display areas where we put on a display of 12 panther cars as part of the 25th anniversary of the PCC. (2 Mk 1 Lima's, 5 Mk 2 Limas, 4 Kallista's and 1 Deville convertible). This is the biggest display that we have had at the show and we were rewarded with a 3rd place cup in the special display section. This was presented to us by David Evans of Classic & Sports Car. This is the 1st time that we have won anything here and I would like to thank everyone for their hard work in putting on the display. In the one make parking area we found 2 further Kallista's parked up and made contact with one of the owners.

We all took turns in going off to look around the show and auto jumble there was plenty to see, from mini Mini's to huge American cars. We had a lot of interest in our cars and some were going away to search the small ads. We also signed up a least 2 new members, one of which only bought his car a few weeks ago and was asking where he could get a printed circuit for his Mk1 Lima clock set. I said hang on I have just been speaking to someone who has a complete clock set to sell and within 10 minutes he had them as they were in the boot of his Merc, how's that for service. It was the first time that I have done Bromley Pageant and it took us about an hour to drive there arriving at 8.45am. Two hours later we finally got into the show, the queue was so slow that I switched off between moves and the engine actually got cold before moving a couple more car lengths, it was horrendous (on the way home it took 7 minutes to cover the same distance at normal speed!). When we finally got in most of the other cars were already there, choosing to arrive at about 8am and having little difficulty getting in (they obviously knew something we didn't!).

Ray & Val arrived shortly after us and very soon had the bacon rolls and tea/coffee in full production. Geoff Coad had arranged a larger club stand than usual for us as it was the 25 Anniversary of the Pcc and Jim Dempster took charge of blowing up the printed balloons. Although the morning was overcast, it was warm and by the afternoon the sun came out making it very pleasant picnic weather.

There was a good cross section of models for the public to come and talk to us about and the icing on the cake was that we came away with a third prize cup for the best club stand. For anyone who has never been there Bromley Pageant is well worth a visit with plenty of cars, events and a sizable auto jumble to brows round. I think that I am correct in saying that Geoff has done Bromley every year since about 1983 (how's that for devotion to duty!). Thanks for all of your hard work Geoff, "Nice One" Mick Laplain