All About Cork: Vintage vroom in Ballincollig

The 12th annual Ballincollig Vintage Show was held in glorious sunshine on Sunday afternoon outside the Castlewest Shopping Centre.

Organised by the Ballincollig Vintage Club, the show was a resounding success, with over a thousand people in attendance across the day.

There were 107 vintage cars there on the day, and they proved extremely popular with the people attending the show.

Brian and Eleanor Cudmore were there from Douglas with their 1980 Morgan 454, which they’ve owned for four years.

“We’d been sailors all our lives, but we sold the boat just before covid, and we bought her to fill the vacuum,” Mr Cudmore explained, but he said they don’t travel very often in the car.

“We would go to functions like this, but we wouldn’t use her for daily use, I mean she’s forty-odd years old, but she has only 44,000 miles on the clock.” 

Ballincollig community gardaí Anthony McSweeney and Paddy Casey were manning a stand on Sunday afternoon, and they were a big hit with some of the younger people visiting the vintage show, but they said there was a serious purpose to their presence too.

“We’ve been meeting people, and giving out leaflets, and talking to people about crime prevention and road safety,” Garda McSweeney said. 

“Road safety is a very big concern at the moment and the show has been a very good opportunity to talk with people about that.”

He added that they had also met a lot of young people, allowing them to try on a garda public order helmet and sit into their squad car. 

He confessed that they had also sat into a squad car themselves, Bill Ryan’s 1969 Vauxhall Victor 3.3 litre garda car.

Mr Ryan explained that his car is the only surviving vehicle of that make and model left in existence.

“They were only used by the police in England and the guards in Ireland, they didn’t actually sell that model with the big engine to the public,” he said.

“In its day it would do 120 miles per hour, which in 1969 was a very fast car, and it’s no slouch even still.”

He has owned the car for over 15 years, and he estimated that he has put about 1,200 hours’ worth of work into the car, and about €15,000 in cash too.

“It’s the genuine deal, genuine log book and everything, so I knew it was worth the effort,” he said.

The car has appeared in one film, but Mr Ryan said it had cost more to repair the damage caused in the filming than he had made from the appearance fee, so now he only brings it to vintage shows. He said he wouldn’t allow it to be driven by anyone else after that experience.

“It’s so rare, it would be a shame to see it written off.” 

Mr Ryan had another car at the show too, this one with a special relevance to the area.

“It’s a 1958 Auto Union DKW, they were cars that were manufactured in Ballincollig from 1952 to 1963, that’s a ’58 model. They were down where the Aldi shop is now, down at the east gate.” 

Ballincollig Vintage Club stalwart Kevin McSweeney told The Echo that the show had been a real success.

“We had a great day, with a lot of cars we didn’t see before. We had a great crowd, we had a non-pedigree dog show, which had a great draw, and our own Vintage Band gave a good performance too,” he said.

Mr McSweeney added that the good weather had made all the difference, and the members of the vintage club were hopeful that next year’s show would be even better.

Have Ballincollig news to share? Contact donal.okeefe@theecho.ie