Historic cars ready to roll

A CALVACADE of vintage and classic cars will be taking over Ballarat this Heritage Festival.

The Vintage Car Show will take to the streets this Sunday, 21 May from 10am until 3pm on Lydiard Street North.

This year’s theme is Country of Origin and there will be 120 cars, trucks and motorbikes from as far back as the 1910s until the 1980s.

“It’s a big, wide variety of vehicles,” said captain of the Ballarat Vintage and Classic Car Club, Brendan Stevens.

“Last year we staged all the vehicles by age but this year we thought we’d do a different idea and stage them by country of origin as people are often surprised by where vehicles come from.”

Mr Stevens said there can be a lot of misconceptions about car manufacturing in Australia, with the first Holden not being made until 1948.

“A lot of vehicles that appeared in Australia in the 1950s weren’t actually manufactured here, they were simply assembled here,” he said.

“A lot of them came out of Canada and America and England. We didn’t really have manufacturing we just had assembly plants.”

The display will have collections from Vintage and Classic Car Club Ballarat, Early Holden Club, Volkswagen Club and the Historical Motorbike Association with cars from Canada, Italy, the United States, France, England and Australia

Mr Stevens said the show is a fantastic opportunity see rare, working cars.

“To be able to block a heritage street off full of heritage cars is a one off really,” he said. “A lot of the stuff should be in museums.”

He also said normally people would have to travel a significant distance to see this range of vehicles.

“We’ve got vehicles built in 1915 and they’re being driven around by their owners so it’s very good for them to get them about for the day,” he said.

“There’re 10 vehicles built before 1920 so they’re more than 100 years old and they still go for a drive regularly.

“You’re otherwise not going to see this stuff unless your involved in the vintage and classic movement or go to a museum.”

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