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Written by Ben Coombes

Following the success of the Pub2Pub Expedition, an epic 27,000-mile drive from the northernmost bar on the planet, to the southernmost, the longest journey ever made by a TVR sports car, Pub2Pub Adventures was born.

Giving others the opportunity to enjoy their own Pub-based travels, Pub2Pub Adventures are running three great trips this year – the Eagle Rally, and the Camembert Run, with many other exciting projects in the pipeline.

ClassicLine are delighted to be a main sponsor of Pub2Pub by providing insurance cover for the fleet of cars including the TVR Chimaera, the Volvo 240, plus another exciting vehicle which we can now reveal… Ben and the Pub2Pub team are going to be keeping us updated here in their regular blog feature over the coming months with news on their travels and adventures!

In celebration of our partnership, Pub2Pub Adventures are offering you the chance to save £50 on your 2019 trip when you insure with ClassicLine. For more details, click here.

As a classic car enthusiast, it’s easy to feel a little embattled as we hurtle towards 2020. Everywhere you look, it seems that some other threat to our chosen hobby is gaining momentum. They’re talking of banning certain cars from Bristol’s city centre. Record traffic levels are taking the joy out of everyday motoring, and the continuous march of electrification and automation is threatening to marginalise our classics. It’s all too easy to be downbeat. In the cold light of an autumnal day, to look to the future is to despair.

But fortunately, there is a cure to these blues.

It happens every November, and it goes by the name of the NEC Classic Motor Show.

For those who haven’t had the pleasure, it’s quite a spectacle. Eight vast halls crammed to bursting with the full spectrum of the classic experience, and jewelled with several thousand cars, their polished paintwork glistening as tens of thousands of visitors flow admiringly past them each day. From Testarossas to Trabants, Bentleys to Beetles, it’s all there, and just wandering the show is an intoxicating experience, as you find yourself swept up in the bustle and excitement of the scene we’re all part of, displayed in its Sunday best beneath the bright lights which bring the perfect paintwork to life. If ever there was an event to make you feel optimistic about the future, this is it, and only the most determined opponent of the automobile could leave the show with their pessimism intact.

Car enthusiasts, a dying breed? No, not a chance.

If the scale of passion on display at the NEC is anything to go by, the future of our hobby is safe for many years to come. As thoughts on which to end the car show year, it doesn’t get much better than that.

I was at the NEC Classic Motor Show as a guest of the TVR Car Club, displaying the well-travelled and ClassicLine Insurance -sponsored Kermit on their stand. And quite a stand it was too, with all the stops being pulled out to show just what a positive ownership TVRs can be, by bringing together ten cars which, between them, had covered over a million miles.

TVR unreliability?

Kermit and its well-travelled friends – which ranged from a ‘70s 3000M to a peak-crazy spectraflaired Sagaris – certainly shut down that line of conversation over the weekend. But there were plenty of other conversations in evidence, as people strolled around the stand, chatting to the owners or grabbing a cuppa in the café area which had been set up for club members. For clubs like the TVRCC, the NEC Classic Motor Show is more than an exercise in showing the brand and the club in the best light; it also offers a chance for members to meet up in a welcoming environment and catch up one last time before winter. And in the many conversations I overheard, I noticed a definite theme to many of the chats which were taking place. Plans for the future. Around the TVRCC coffee machines, the future of classic motoring certainly seemed positive.

So ignore the naysayers. Classic cars aren’t going to be forced off our roads any time soon – not if the endless enthusiastic conversations of the NEC are anything to go by. The future of classic motoring is bright, and I for one am very psyched to be part of it, for many years to come.