Words: Antony Ingram
Photographs: Manufacturers
This year’s Festival of the Unexceptional takes place on July 26 in the spacious grounds of Grimsthorpe Castle in Lincolnshire. Grimsthorpe is a fine place, to be sure, but even the 16th century country house can’t outshine the quality of the metal that turns up for FOTU each year.
The best of the best can be found right in front of the house, in the Concours de l’Ordinaire. To keep the entries fresh, there’s a rolling 25-year rule in place, which means cars of 25 years or older are eligible for the Concours – and for us, that’s an opportunity to take a look at which cars are celebrating their quarter-century, and might just make an appearance on the crunchy gravel driveway.
Turns out, we’re in for a treat if any of this year’s crop makes it through to the final fifty. 2000’s street furniture was a good-looking bunch, as it turned out, and a talented one too – there aren’t many from our ten-car selection below you’d have to think too hard about using every day, such was the pace of progress in the 1990s and 2000s.
So whether you’re an MPV fan, fancy a repmobile from the new millennium, or fancy a 25-year-old icon of style, the following ten cars should make a pretty good shopping list for anyone turning up at this year’s Festival…
Alfa Romeo 147
Alfa’s family cars are firm Festival favourites. We’ve seen 33s, 145s, 146s, 155s and more in previous years, and one even (sort of) won the very first Concours de l’Ordinaire in 2014, when Eddie Rattley’s Nissan Cherry Europe – an Alfa Romeo Arna Ti by another name – took top prize. And this year, the 147 – maybe one of the prettiest C-segment hatchbacks ever – reaches the 25-year mark.
It’s the kind of car that makes us really miss Alfa’s presence in this class. Sure, in 2000 you could have bought a 1.6-litre Ford Focus that was more spacious and even handled better, but anyone who bought a 147 with its 1.6 Twin Spark engine (a 2.0 was available) deserves a pat on the back. It matched the step up in quality taken by the Alfa 156 a few years earlier, while super-quick steering makes it fun to drive too.
Audi A2
This 1999 arrival only hit the UK in 2000, which means it’s a prime candidate for this year’s Festival of the Unexceptional. In fact, there’s every chance that any A2s that appear this year will look better than any other car on the field – Audi’s use of aluminium in the chassis and body panels means rust, the enemy of everyday cars from the past, simply isn’t an issue. More than any other car on this list, it’s one you’d not think twice about using every day of the year, whatever the weather.
The A2 might actually be too exceptional for FOTU, given its engineering intrigue, avant-garde styling and premium four-ringed badge, but in its favour, it was also a bit of a flop for the brand. It was just a bit too expensive when new; the market wasn’t ready for a supermini this smart. We love a commercial failure at FOTU, so maybe the A2’s perfect after all.
Chrysler PT Cruiser
Perhaps at 25 years old, the Chrysler PT Cruiser’s time has finally come? The styling has always been an acquired taste, evoking American cars of the 1930s and 1940s without referencing anything directly, but the PT gets an unduly hard time for a vehicle that was received pretty well in period and offered buyers a much more characterful alternative to small MPVs like the Renault Megane Scenic and Vauxhall Zafira.
Autocar went as far as to say it was “very nearly as practical, easy to live with and good to drive as a Scenic and, if anything, better value” – £14,995 in 2000 was £1,400 less than the equivalent Scenic. Today you can pick up a decent PT for a grand or two, and there’s even a small but lively owner’s community, albeit one that plays fast and loose with the stick-on chrome. Better, we think, to find a tidy car and bring it to FOTU as an example of an underappreciated family car from the new millennium.
Citroen Picasso
The Citroen Xsara Picasso was one of those rather more normal mini-MPVs the PT Cruiser was designed to go up against, but in reality the Citroen was a little more interestingly styled than most rivals too. The jellybean-like five-seater technically launched in 1999 but only came to the UK in June 2000, so the very earliest cars will be celebrating their 25th birthday as they roll onto the lawn at Grimsthorpe Castle.
We’re yet to see whether the Picasso will develop the same cult following as an Espace (or indeed a PT Cruiser, or Citroen’s own Berlingo) but there must be a few people picking them up today who once rode in the back of these as kids. In typical Citroen style, the Picasso rode and handled well too. Bonus points to any Picasso at the show that still has the plastic shopping trolley accessory…
Ford Mondeo (Mk2)
Ford did it again with the second-generation Mondeo. Just as the original came in and turned around Ford’s repmobile game, with its excellent handling, fizzy engines and smart interior, the second-gen Mondeo did likewise – and responded to a class standard that had risen much higher as the 1990s wore on.
The Mondeo finally got Ford’s sharp ‘New Edge’ styling that made the Ka, Puma and Focus look so good, only here it was also paired with a Passat-style sense of integrity – the new Mondeo looked and felt, inside and out, like a quality car. It was even better to drive, too. Like the original Mondeo, looked-after examples are rare, but we’d love to see a tidy, low-spec car at this year’s Festival.
Honda Civic (Mk7)
What’s the opposite of a glow-up? That’s whatever the seventh-generation Civic got when it arrived in 2000. In bloated five-door form especially it looked more like the old MPV-style Civic Shuttle than a slick new Focus rival, though the doorstop-like three-door (which got a Type-R version in 2001) was a bit more like it.
Yet it was a pretty good car behind the homely face. The near-monobox styling meant huge interior space for the class, it kicked its rivals into touch in terms of equipment for the money, and the engines and gearboxes (operated by a high-set, dash-mounted lever) were, as usual with Honda, well ahead of anything else. Make ours a three-door with the lively 89bhp 1.4-litre engine.
Nissan Almera (N16)
Apologies if you’ve ever brought an N15-generation Nissan Almera to the Festival and we’ve missed it, but we can’t recall seeing many in previous years – they’re rare cars these days. Their N16 successor isn’t much more common but we’re hoping one or two come out of the woodwork over the next few years, as they’re now old enough to be eligible for the Concours de l’Ordinaire.
The N16 Almera (Pulsar in Japan) was actually built at Nissan’s plant near Sunderland, so there’s some home pride there. It’s a neat handler, has a suitably quirky feature to give visitors and judges a talking point (the little pop-out ‘curry hook’ for holding takeaways in the passenger footwell), and it is very much unloved – its poor European sales were a big part of why Nissan broke with convention and launched the Qashqai in 2006.
Subaru Impreza (GD/GG)
No, not the WRX. We love a homologation special, but with its wings and scoops and rally pedigree, an Impreza WRX is the wrong kind of car for the Festival. The standard Impreza though – that’s much more like it, and alongside the new bug-eyed WRX that launched in 2000, there was much less fanfare for the regular Impreza, found in 1.6-litre and 2.0-litre naturally aspirated forms.
The chassis was just as good as the WRX, albeit not as extreme, so even these non-turbo cars are great to drive, while the 1.6 really slips under the radar – it didn’t get the pumped-up arches of the 2.0 and WRX. And with standard all-wheel drive (which made it a favourite of those in rural areas when new), it’ll almost make you wish FOTU was a mid-winter event…
Toyota RAV4 (XA20)
A few years back we brought an immaculate, restored Toyota RAV4 to FOTU to see how the visitors reacted. After all, as one of the cars that arguably inspired the current wave of crossovers and SUVs, it has a lot to answer for. But judging by the crowds it drew all day, people were rather fond of the RAV4 – so maybe the second-generation is now worth a look too.
It certainly has more of a 2000s aesthetic than the early car, with a slightly more muscular, technical look than the curvy 1994 original. Its 1.8 and 2.0-litre engines got the now-fashionable variable valve timing too – the smaller unit is effectively the unit used in the contemporary Celica and MR2. And the quirky, beach-ready two-door bodystyle remained. That’s definitely the one we’d go for, and while good original RAV4s are creeping up in value, the second-generation can still be picked up for pennies.
Vauxhall Corsa (Corsa C)
The Vauxhall Nova (Corsa A elsewhere) and Corsa (Corsa B) are long-time Festival of the Unexceptional favourites, and in 2025, the third-generation Corsa ‘C’ becomes eligible for the Concours de l’Ordinaire too. It almost seems too new, but when you realise this generation is nowhere near as familiar a sight on the roads as it used to be, maybe now really is the time to welcome it into our midst.
Visually, the Corsa C was a sympathetic update of its predecessor – the same bubbly look, just with a few sharper details, and fashionable stacked tail lights. That styling hides a more spacious cabin though (the wheelbase grew by 50mm) and a much more sophisticated chassis, so whichever engine you chose (1.0, 1.2 and 1.4 petrols and a 1.7 diesel were available at launch), it out-rode and out-handled the previous Corsa. The cabin too was more grown-up.
