Buckie Classic Car Show - August 30th
Having been regular attendees at the annual Buckie Classic Car Show for many years, we were all very disappointed to see on Facebook on July 24th that the 2026 show had been cancelled. The organisers had posted a few days before that their Facebook page had recently been hacked and they had setup up a new one, so there was some speculation (and hope!) in the local classic car community that perhaps the cancellation announcement had been posted by the hacker.
Sadly, this proved not to be the case as, following a few e-mails, it was indeed confirmed that following the resignation of the Chairman of the organising committee, this years show was definitely cancelled. As a large number of club members had registered for the show and had set the day aside, we therefore hurriedly began organising an alternative day out in the form of a road run down to visit the transport museum in Dundee. We also refunded the members who had paid.
Then, on July 30th, a mere 6 days after the cancellation had been announced, the Show was back on! Clearly there were a lot of internal committee and external difficulties, but we were all delighted to hear that the show was going ahead!
One of the problems with Buckie is that it is so popular that you have to register months in advance - we registered for our 2026 Club Stand back in November 2025. At that time and over subsequent months, we ended up with16 cars registered for our stand. Unfortunately, as the show approached, things had moved on and 4 couples had to drop out, so in the end, we had 12 cars booked.
Even more unfortunately, one of our members fell foul of the damp and greasy roads on the way to Buckie and lost control of his MGB on a bend, ending up going through a fence and landing in in a field. Thankfully he was fine, but his car had sustained some front end damage and was not only un-drivable, but impossible to extricate from the field. The car has since been recovered and we are hopeful that his insurers will agree to repair it - all club members have fingers crossed for him.
And so it was that 11 cars - one of which was a Mazda MX5 as one of the other MGBs had been hit by a youngster in a VW Polo the day before - assembled in the nearby Tesco car park ready for our 09:10 scheduled arrival time. The organisers had decided to allocate individual clubs an arrival time since an abnormal load was scheduled to pass through nearby and was likely to lead to potentially significant traffic delays. The plan worked well, and we got in much easier than we had in the past.
There seemed to be fewer cars on the showground than in previous years, however that it itself was beneficial in that there was much more room on the field and cars were not packed together so tightly, leaving exhibitors and spectators much more room to wander around and chat to owners.
Despite the depleted field, there were some fabulous vehicles on show and plenty of stands and food vendors to keep everyone entertained and fed throughout the day. Amazingly, for the princely sum of the £5 entry fee, the 'goody bag' each entrant received when signing on included a voucher for a free fish supper and a hot drink.
Luckily the weather held for the day despite the gloomy forecast, and it wasn't until around 16:00 when most exhibitors started to leave that light drizzle started.
Despite all the trials and tribulations leading up to the event, it once again lived up to its reputation as being one of the best classic car events in the North East so many thanks to the organisers for all their efforts putting it all on despite the numerous difficulties. A double page article in the Press & Journal published the day before the show shed some light on the problems that had led to the cancellation, but hopefully these have now all been resolved and we are all optimistic that the event will return bigger and better in 2027.
