Popham Airfield is an airfield in Coxford Down, Winchester, Hampshire which holds numerous events (updated to show events in 2025 ) throughout the year and though many of them are geared towards flying enthusiasts, it also caters for the classic car, and motorcycle community.

We popped down there at the beginning of May this year for the Classic Car Show, Aero Autojumble Vintage Fly-in and took a lot of photographs from a wide range of vehicles and here are just a few of them.

The date for next year's 2023 event is Monday 1st May and yes, it's May Day Bank Holiday.

Originally a 1964 Ford Consul Capri Coupe  1498 cc, this was modified to a convertible after it's purchase.
More recently it has been completely restored, a record of which can be found here with some excellent colour photographs.

The Ford Consul Capri was a 2-door coupé version of the Ford Consul Classic 4 door, and was available from 1961 until 1964, initially destined for the export market, but became available to the UK market in 1962.
Originally it was an underpowered 1340cc car and then Ford increased it to 1498cc in 1962 

Conversions of saloons with the decapitation of the roof after sale were far from uncommon. For a fascinating history of cars converted go here and look at a Kent based company called Crayford and it's gallery and it's archive.. Oooh..the nostalgia!

My Cortina MKII never looked like this!

So this is the factory hard top model. Once you have driven a convertible, and felt the flexing of the car as you drive it across terrain without the rigidity imposed by the hard top,(and the wind in your hair of course) then you completely "get" the notion to take a perfectly good car and decapitate it!
There are other trains of thought of course, like, the wind is going to ruin my hair! .....Fair comment!

Ford built 1,038 Capri 280's  powered by a 160bhp 2.8-litre 12-valve V6.

It cost £11,999 in 1987 brand spanking new in "Brooklands" green livery, Recaro front seats, 15-inch alloys, and a limited-slip differential.

The manual 5 speed gearbox adopting the  2.8-litre V6 with Bosch K-Jetronic fuel injection manages 0- 60 in 7.9 seconds and a 127mph top speed

Getting above 25mpg .....a bit of a challenge.

But if you have a 2.8 litre engine 

Interestingly, in March 2016, a 1987 Ford Capri 280 sold at auction for a world record price of £54,000.
Admittedly, it only had 936 miles on the clock, but still.

What car could you get in 2016 for 54k ? 

Now, before you go rushing around to your neighbour who has one for sale in his driveway for a rather fetching price, the Ford Capri 280 was only manufactured in it's aforementioned "Brooklands" green, however there are some Ford Capri 2.8 injection models that were produced in exactly the same colour,............which might not have quite the same commercial appeal.

The three door Ford Fiesta XR2 had a 5 speed gearbox and 1.6 litre engine and 1987 proved to be the Fiesta's best selling year since it entered the market in 1976 to compete with the Renault 5 and Volkswagen Polo. 

The marque of this 6 cylinder 2912 cc British sports car  has a history all of it's own perpetuating, when launched in 1959, the Austin Healey racing pedigree.

The car was assembled at the BMC factory in Abingdon, though the coachwork was by Jensen Motors.
The car shown is the MKII, though it should be said that the MKI was only referred to as such, after the MKII was launched in March 1961.

The MKIII was launched in 1964 until 1968. The 3000 series continued the success of it's predecessor in competitive rally and it would simply be sheer neglect if we did not continue the Austin Healey story here. 

In 1957 The XK150 said goodbye to the split windscreen of it's forebears, the ground breaking Jaguar XK120 and XK140  and became available in a range of 13 colours.

Available as a fixed head and a drophead coupe initially, the roadster XK150 OTS (open two seater) arriving in 1958 .

The dashboard had a leather trim with walnut as an available option. The 3.4 litre engine had a new "B" type cylinder head increasing the power to 180 SAE BHP at 5750 rpm.  

The successor to the Jaguar XK150 was the E - Type.

The MG Magnette ZA manufactured between 1953-1956 was the first car to be powered by the new four cylinder 1,489 cc B-Series I4 with twin carburettors and also the first to use BMC's new four-speed manual gearbox with synchromesh. 

The interior featured leather trimmed seats,a polished wood dash and door cappings.

It was road tested in 1955 and delivered a top speed of 79.7 mph, 0-60 mph in 23.1 seconds with a fuel consumption of 24.9 miles per gallon and would set you back just over £900-00.

It was succeeded in 1956 by the Magnette ZB after a production run of 18,076.

Car Rear of the year?  Well, the unforgettable, over-the-top, ostentatious, even garish tail fins of the 1959 Cadillac Sedan DeVille and its gorgeous sister the Coupe Deville of the same year are still turning heads and attracting cameral lenses to this day.

This 1959  "Pink Cadillac"  Flat Top Sedan DeVille was one of Cadillac’s (GM's luxury brand) most memorable hardtop sedans with the iconic high profile tail fins, and, as was the Cadillac brand of the time, the epitome of luxury with precision engineering and coachwork.

The 4-speed automatic is powered by the Cadillac 390 CID 16-valve OHV V8 engine (6384 cc) with a top speed of 126mph and a petrol tank that holds 17.4 imperial gallons (20.9 US) with bench seats designed to accommodate six people in absolute comfort.

It's 1959, but the car had air-conditioning, power seats, power steering, power brakes (front and rear drums), self-dipping headlights, and cruise control.  

The boot size is, well..... it's enormous.

It delivered comfort, and good noise insulation and perhaps surprising for a vehicle approaching six metres in length and a curb weight of 2270 Kg it handled well.

The length is 225 inches (5715mm), the wheelbase is 130 inches (3302mm) which contributes to the ride quality as well as the  very low base.

The car width is 80.2 inches (6ft 8") (2037mm )wide and 54.3" (1379mm) high.

A 1959 Classic Mini is 55.5 inches (1409mm) wide a whole 24 and a half inches less. 

Fuel Consumption
Now, back to the petrol tank capacity and the fact that, though slow by today's standards the 0 - 60mph is 11.1 secs and 0-100mph: 31.3, the car, unsurprisingly is a tad thirsty, but to move that amount of splendorous weight, well....it's really fast. 

Extra-urban: (up to 62mph/100km/h) it delivers between 14.6-17.5 mpg (imperial) 
City driving: 8.1-9.7mpg (not for popping down to the corner shop for a pint of milk)
Motorway/highway: (up to 87mph/140km/h): 12.9-15.5mpg 

Combined average is: 12.3mpg

Just to give some perspective on this, in 1959 (converting USA gallons to Imperial (UK) gallons) and the comparative exchange rate; we Brits were paying 21p for a gallon of petrol and across the pond, they were paying $0.36 cents which equates to 13p per gallon.

The 1959 Cadillac DeVille Price Range was frpm $5,250 to $5,500 and the Coupe DeVille ( told you it was gorgeous ) was the most popular of the 1959 Series 6300 with 21,924 sold, followed by the 6-window Sedan Deville with 19,158 and the 4-window sedan with 12,308 sales.

In the luxury market over 53,000 DeVilles were sold in their first year as a separate series, representing 37% of the total of all 142,272 Cadillacs sold in 1959, however that represented a mere 2.54% of cars sold in the USA that year.

The biggest-selling brand in the USA that year was Chevrolet with 1,462,140 vehicles with 26.11% of the market with Ford in 2nd place with 25.91%.

The biggest contributor to Chevrolet's success in 1959 was the highest-selling  Impala Series with a price range of $2,598 - $2,900.

By contrast in the same year in France sales were dominated by the Citroen 2 CV and the Renault Dauphine.

In the UK the Morris Minor (1948-1971) had just become the first British car to hit the magic million in sales and the Mini at £537 6s 8d (marketed as a car for under £500-00 before sales tax) had just made its debut.

Average earnings in 1959

The average weekly wage in the UK for men and women was £13.20 and £6.90 respectively.

The average annual family income in the United States was $5400 and for a single person $2600, though within that average there were about 10 million families who earned under $3000 in 1959.

Taking the Cadillac to the beach

So if you did fancy taking the car out to the beach for the day (that would be Cleethorpes) from Scunthorpe and bearing in mind the M180 didn't exist in 1959 and there were not that many cars on the road, then the trip going via Scawby, Brigg and Barnetby le Wold would be 62.2 miles return.

With a happy medium of, let's say 15mpg, then it would cost you 18 Shillings and 8 pence at four shillings and sixpence per gallon ..... for the six of you.

This is a 1962 Greyhound model produced by AC Cars of Thames Ditton.

Only 83 of the Greyhound were made, between 1959 and 1963, the reason being that the company, after the success of the AC Ace at Le Mans then had to devote their resources towards building cars for retired racing driver Carroll Shelby.

He experimented with fitting a Ford V8 engine and transmission into the AC Ace car and adopting it as the platform for what would become the world famous Shelby Cobra.

Released as a touring car in 1959 the Greyhound had an ample boot an interior with ample headroom and featured leather front and back seats and carpeting throughout.

This model features the prized 1.971 litre straight six Bristol which was the most popular engine, though three other engines were also used:

1.991-litre AC Cars OHC
2.216-litre - Bristol
2.553-litre - Ford Zephyr

It had front disc brakes and drums on the rear, with fully independent front and rear suspension on coil springs and aluminium body work.

It is reminiscent of the Aston Martin DB4 and the interior has shades of the Jaguar XK140 and 150, which it was originally designed to compete with.