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Allsorts received a call from a local Winchester school saying “we have a school project on transport and wonder whether you could provide cars for our 6 -7 year olds to look at”

Allsorts responded positively and on the penultimate day of October we were able to muster 7 out of the 9 cars promised – all of the cars were able to start but it was the owners who failed to fire up on the day through ill health. The cars spread from the turn of the 20th century and represented a wide spread of decades up to the 80’s.

We arrived at Western C of E Primary School at the allocated time and managed to arrange the cars in a time line. The 6/7 year old pupils filed out with an adult in charge of 4 pupils apiece. Whilst they were never still enough for me to count them – there must have been at least 50 kids.

The list of cars included a 1910 Adler, a 1937 Vauxhall Vitesse, a red 1950’s Jaguar XK150, a 1959 original Morris Mini Minor , a rare and immaculate automatic MGC GT. Completing the line up were a late 70’s MG Midget and MGBGT

We supplied a list of participating cars to the organising teacher for her information. She had prepared questionnaires for the pupils to complete through their adult helpers. Not only was it designed to trace the development of cars but to promote many other skills including use of materials in manufacture, maths, reading of number plates etc etc.

It was amazing for those exhibiting that the kids had no idea what a window winder was, marvelled and giggled at trafficators, could not believe lack of seat belts, did not understand why seats were made of vinyl, why cars did not come with heaters etc etc etc  Contributed by Neil Simpson

The response from those exhibiting included

"Just wanted to say how much I enjoyed today's Allsorts outing to Western Primary School. The children were very enthusiastic and it was amazing (and amusing!) to see them all inside the cars. "

An E Mail from the organising teacher said

"Thank you again for bringing the cars on Tuesday, the children learned so much and really enjoyed looking at them. I think the Beaulieu visit may be rather an anti-climax after all that hands on experience they have had!

I have attached some photos that I took for you to use if you want to. For the children in the last photos I have permission to share the image."

It was great to see the kids enjoy and experience living history that we could share with them. Albeit most of them wanted to know how to blow the horn on the cars. On a wider it was pleasurable to perhaps influence young minds to remember and maintain an interest in the internal combustion engine that is currently under siege and will no doubt mutate into something more sustainable. However, I am pretty sure that whilst there is E Bay – there will always be petrol for sale!