Techno Classica Essen

This was my first visit to Techno Classica in Essen, a show which had been highly recommended to me by a fellow Petrolhead. Nothing however could have prepared me for the sheer quality and variety of classic and modern cars on show, over 2500 in fact, most of which are available for sale.

This was the 25th anniversary of the show, which covered 18 halls, with a further 3 outside areas where vendors were showing their cars for sale. In addition to cars on show, visitors could browse a huge area of spare parts and Automobilia.

The renowned UK auction house Coys was also on hand and offering a great collection of mouth watering cars for sale.

In addition to the stunning variety of classic cars on show, Techno Classica was the chosen venue for the German launch of the Alfa Romeo 4C, the Opel Cascada and the VW Golf GTi mark 7, the Golf standing beside an example of every other series GTi and a W12 mid engined monster. The Alfa showing some of the design features of Alfas of old, but with Carbon Fibre tub, likely to get Alfa back where it should be in the marketplace.

Aston Martin celebrating its 100th anniversary were showing the limited edition Vanquish alongside the original 'Bond' DB5 The Carbon Fibre roof and special two tone paint scheme made the Vanquish even more stunning.

In fact after walking the halls for nearly 3 days,and with sore feet, I still hadn't seen everything.The Ferrari, Jaguar, Bugatti, Porsche, Lamborghini and of course Mercedes were all around the halls, modern and classic alike. The standard of restoration of some of the older cars was beyond anything I have seen before, and I came away promising to return for the 2014 show which is on between 26-30th March.

I took over 300 photographs, many of which are on show on the Driving for Pleasure Facebook page.

This is without doubt the premier venue for Classic cars, and one which should be on all genuine enthusiasts bucket list