Breakfast club car meets are keeping the car community alive

I’m not sure if it was the Duke of Richmond’s people who coined the term ‘breakfast club’ for the famous enthusiast gatherings at the Goodwood Motor Circuit, but if it wasn’t, they were certainly the first to recognise and harness the power and popularity of these simple events.

These days, they stage four breakfast clubs on Sunday mornings during the motorsport season, choosing different themes for entered cars (and motorbikes) and weaving the gatherings around their bigger events.

You don’t pay to enter, although you do have to register (and thus provide your details). There’s good but pricey food and drink on offer, while a few stalls can sell you car-flavoured stuff.

The demand has grown to the extent that keen entrants arrive before 7am and the organisers have taken to issuing instructions for spectators so that they will avoid getting in the way of the cars arriving for display.

Inevitably, the success has spread widely. Other motorsport venues (such as Prescott hillclimb, near Cheltenham), car museums (such as the National Motor Museum at Beaulieu), car factories (such as Caterham Cars’ in Dartford) and even some big dealerships hold thriving breakfast clubs.

In the season, there can be a dozen to choose from right across the country.

As a serial Goodwood attendee, I can say with authority that the appeal of a breakfast club is powerful and enduring.

For a start, you’re presented with a solid-gold reason for taking the trouble to fettle your pride and joy and then to drive it to a nice location.

Once there, you get to hobnob with others with similar enthusiasms whom you might not otherwise meet and from whose experience you can always learn.

Better still, this can be a family affair. Breakfast clubs usually only occupy a couple of hours, so family members can happily tag along for the ride knowing that they won’t get bored and they will arrive home with plenty of hours left in the day.

And on site, you get to park somewhere photogenic that wouldn’t normally be available to you. Think the central arena at Beaulieu or the paddock at Shelsley Walsh hillclimb.

Yet despite this brush with the rarefied atmosphere, you don’t have to do anything expensive or competitive, let alone bother with encumbrances like helmets or race suits. Lots of us enjoy the society of other owners but shun the competitive bit. It’s certainly easier on the car.

Best of all, if your eye is on safeguarding the future of classic or specialist cars, you can proudly scan the ranks of people like yourself and cars like yours and know that, together, you constitute a lobby so powerful that the most rampant bunch of car-hating legislators would do well to take seriously.