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Why the Festival of the Unexceptional is the best classic car event

Keith WR Jones, Contributor
Fri, 04 Apr 2025

Hagerty’s Festival of the Unexceptional is a car show with a difference. Rather than worshipping 250mph hypercars worth thousands of times more than the combined value of prizes ever given away on Bullseye, it celebrates unsung automotive heroes from 1970 to 2000. Hatchbacks, saloons, estates and MPVs, all once common sights on the nation’s streets, will soon gather agan in Lincolnshire for a summertime nostalgiafest.

Beyond providing automotive enthusiasts with a valuations service, specialist insurance packages and membership programmes, Hagerty’s UK operation also hosts a number of carefully themed vehicular events.

For many attendees, it’s the annual Festival of the Unexceptional — known as FOTU for ease and more effective social media sharing — which has established itself as the must-attend car show on the calendar.

Central to the Festival of the Unexceptional’s success are the cars it champions. As the name implies, it’s a celebration of those common or garden models from our collective childhood. Those everyday motors that were omnipresent as they jostled for kerbside parking spots if they couldn’t bask in the luxury of a driveway. The best-sellers, the ones in lowly trim levels seldom gussied-up with optional extras, the ones that are now so rare that you gasp and point when you see one.

Except at FOTU 2025 you won’t just see one — you’ll see hundreds of cars from 1970 through to 2000. Each one an instant memory randomiser as you point and stare because your parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, neighbours, teachers — perhaps even a much younger you — ‘had one of those’.

Therein lies another major draw for the Festival of the Unexceptional. Let’s face it, many classic car shows are dull events if you’re not into such things, not helped by nerdy middle-aged men yapping motoring gobbledygook at one another.

FOTU’s different — it’s all-encouraging and accessible for anyone whether you’re an anorak-wearing car geek [the author’s waving] or you simply fancied a day out doing something different in the sunshine.

In the post-pandemic years, the Festival of the Unexceptional has been held in the beautiful and spacious grounds surrounding Grimsthorpe Castle in south Lincolnshire. FOTU returns to the venue for the 2025 event on Saturday 26 July, which with any luck, will coincide with one of the three days of British summer, so you can unpack your picnic, or buy food and drink from a wide array of refreshment stalls and eat in the sunshine.

For owners of cars — and light commercial vehicles — registered in the 30-year period from 1970 onwards, there’s an opportunity to enter your classic for FOTU’s Concours de l’Ordinaire section.

Applications are already being encouraged for especially charming examples of those once-mundane motors, which will be pored over by a team of judges who’ll be keen to hear about the car you love. And worry not, they’re not only looking out for pristine examples, a car that’s clearly cherished but has seen far better days cosmetically is as worthy of consideration as one that still looks miraculously showroom-fresh.

Classics shortlisted for the 2025 Concours de l’Ordinaire will be curated around a designated lawn close to Grimsthorpe Castle itself, forming a special viewing area. You've got until 28 April 2025 to submit your application.

Previous Concours de l'Ordinaire winners

If it’s entertainment you seek then make sure you’re gathered around the stage area for an assortment of chats and Q&As with stars of motoring television and YouTube channels, the highlights being Jonny Smith and Richard Porter off of podcasting’s Smith and Sniff, sharing anarchic anecdotes, answering your questions and hopefully the returning with a fresh edition of the Wheeltrim of Misfortune game. It’s a quick and effective way of recording material for the following week’s pod, so fair play to the guys.

Somewhat inevitably as you’re wandering wistfully around the lines of lurid green Austin Metros, Parma Violet-hued Hyundai Accents and hearing aid beige-alike Volvo 240 estates, you may experience a pang of regret that you don’t have a FOTU-appropriate car of your own to attend the 2026 event in.

Well, good news — an addition for 2025 is a dedicated section called FOTU For Sale, where sellers can pay a £10 premium over the cost of a regular entry to advertise their classic in person to a captive audience and be on-hand to answer questions from would-be buyers.

Tickets for the 2025 Hagerty Festival of the Unexceptional are now on sale and cost £25 per person, while accompanied under 15s get in for free.

Ask HJ

Why is my classic car not tax exempt?

My car was first registered on the 2nd of January 1985 and my calculations make that my car is 40 years and 2 days old.... yet the DVLA insists my car is not eligible for exemption stating that the vehicle needs to be OVER forty years old... even though it is over 40 by a few weeks now why is this?
Tax exemption for a classic car applies from the 1st April in the year after its 40th birthday, so as your car was first registered on 2nd January 1985 it will become tax exempt on 1st April this year.
Answered by David Ross
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