Wonderland Classic & Sports Car Festival
JUNE 29th & 30th - 2024
Ferry Farm fields - Hoveringham - Nottingham NG14 7JP
Classic & Sports Cars|Vintage|Americans, Customs & Rods
Saturday night 'Car of the Night' award|Live band 'Radio Romantic'
Clubs|Individuals|Traders|Food|Bar|Camping Fri & Sat night
Sunday judging 'Show n Shine Day'
2024 Entry forms now available.
Click on the tabs top left of this page for full entry details or the below links for entry form only
Please note: To retain a diverse balance of display vehicle ages, we reserve the right to limit the number of vehicles registered after 31.12.10
INDIVIDUAL Entry Form
CLUB Entry Form
TRADE Entry Form
CAMPING Entry Form
Celebrating:
Ford Mustang 60 Years | Ford Capri 55 Years | MKII Capri 50 Years
Stunning displays of Mustangs and Capris - contact us now to book YOUR Mustang or Capri
on to the display areas wonderland@capriclub2000.co.uk
BOOK YOUR MUSTANG ONTO THE 60 YEARS CELEBRATION DISPLAY NOW!
BOOK YOUR CAPRI MKI / MKIII ONTO THE 55 YEARS CELEBRATION DISPLAY NOW!
BOOK YOUR CAPRI MKII ONTO THE 50 YEARS CELEBRATION DISPLAY NOW!
Radio Romantic will be on stage Saturday night. They are one of the UK's most popular acts -
tributing 70's, 80's, 90's and 00's party anthems, Punk, Ska and New Wave Electronic music
We are proud to announce that the iconic CORGI brand joins our prestigious
2024 sponsor line-up. There is plenty of 'Capri action' planned this year in Corgi's
Vanguards range inc a MKII Capri to pre-order.
For exciting model news inc details of a Capri MKII, new Capri model sets due to be launched
this year, and the many other classic car models go to www.corgi.co.uk and join the mailing list
A couple of Capris to watch our for at Wonderland 2024 are Mark Walker's Forest Green MKIII
3.0S Janspeed Turbo Development Capri (as featured in RETORFORD magazine March 2024)
and Steve Houghton's Olympic Blue MKII 3000 Ghia Capri which is believed to be the
oldest road-going MKII Ghia Capri.
We are delighted to hear that John Palmer will be joing us again in 2024 and bringing along his
vintge Model-T Ford on Saturday and Sunday (pictured above in 2023 with Sarah Crabtree)
Watch the 2023 festival video HERE thanks to James Bailey
View more of James Bailey's videos at www.youtube.com/@jamesbailey6946
2023 RESULTS & WRITE-UP >
Festival write up page 1
Festival write up page 2
Festival write up page 3
Festival write up page 4
2023 RESULTS:
Capri MKI 1st CPL 999H Dave Southall 1970 Silver MKI
Capri MKI 2nd GNX 100K Karen Simpson 1972 Sunset Red MKI
Capri MKII 1st MMR 871R Nick Boyall 1976 Gold MKII
Capri MKIII (4 cyl) 1st DAV 178Y Dave Ward 1982 Green 2.0 Cabaret
Capri MKIII (4 cyl) 2nd RHE 139X Michael Ward 1982 Silver 2.0GL
Capri MKIII (V6) 1st Dean Treadaway HUM 795T 1979 Black 3.0S
Capri MKIII (V6) 2nd D229 VAR 1987 Brooklands Green 280
Ford pre 1970 1st YUL 386H Alec Ross 1969 Gold Cortina 1600E
Ford pre 1970 2nd JTF 627F Wayne Davidge 1968 Green Escort
Ford 1970-1980 1st BPO 910W Russ White 1980 Red Cortona XR6 Interceptor
Ford 1970-1980 2nd CTM 490T John Bee 1978 Midnight Blue Escort RS2000
Ford 1981-1990 1st H474 SWE Darren Vincent 1990 Red Fiesta RS Turbo
Ford 1981-1990 2nd F228 DKU Sarah West 1989 Red Fiesta Popular Plus
Ford 1991-2000 1st X235 RPU Vas Lashley 2000 Imperial Blue Puma
Ford 1991-2000 2nd P21 COP Derek Roberts 1996 Red Escort RS Cosworth
Ford 2001-2010 1st MK10 EDS Peter Javens 2010 Ultimate Green Focus MKII RS
Ford 2011-2010 2nd ST58 CQL 2008 White Focus ST
Concours pre 1970 1st TOR 524G Colin Goy 1969 White MG Midget
Concours pre 1970 2nd MBF 199H Darren Hughes 1969 Green Jaguar E-Type
Concours 1970-1994 1st H612 AHY Clive Emery 1990 Gold Vauxhall Astra GTE 16V
Concours 1970-1994 2nd A253 XUX John Mulraney 1983 Ivory Mercedes Benz
Concours 1995-2010 1st P928 CFV Steve Taylor 1996 Red BMW 728i
Concours 1995-2010 2nd N722 OGH Angela Taylor 1996 White Porsche 993 Targa
American 1st AHJ 277E Matt Sumners 1967 Candy & Apple Red Ford Mustang Coupe
American 2nd HHU 230K Rob Marshall 1970 Green Chevrolet Camero
Modified 1990 onwards 1st D18 RAG Richard Goodman 2006 Red Ford Focus ST3
Modified 1990 onwards 2nd C3 MUE Andrew Camm 2004 Black Focus STi 70
Vehicle of Special Interest 1st RRB 293E Keith Hemsley 1967 Florentine Blue Riley Elf III
Vehicle of Special interest 2nd 935 XUB Gary Brady 1953 Turquoise Ford Pop
Furthest Travelled Stuart (Scottish Capri Club) 461 miles from Aberdeen!
Best Presented Club Stand: Amber Valley Car Club
Best Themed Club Stand: Fordsport (Bar Rewind)
Car of the Show (Saturday) AX-5156 John Palmer 1924 Black Model-T Ford
Car of the Show (Sunday) HTY 461W Dave Betts 1981 Delorean
Special thanks to our new waste management partner ENVA
Sustainable waste management - Your complete solution located in the Midlands
www.enva.com
If you have a few minutes, please scroll down and look back at the history of our now iconic Wonderland Classic & Sports Car Festival ...
The Wonderland story 2001 - 2020
When did it all start? ... How did it start? ...
See photos and stories from 2001 as we celebrate our 20th festival year
PART 1: The early years at Wonderland Pleasure Park 2001 - 2007
Way back at the turn of this century ... in August 2000, Rosemarie Revill (Darren's Mum, pictured above
- who sadly passed away in 2010) first came up with the idea of our Capri Club International Mansfield
Notts Branch staging it's own show. She already had a venue in mind - the Wonderland Pleasure Park,
just off the A614 White Post roundabout near Farnsfield, Notts.
plans were drawn up, site visits made and in early 2001 we started the promotional work for our
'Classic Wonderland Car Show'. The dates were June 9th & 10th, 2001. We always wanted our event to be 'fun'
and not just cars parked in a field. The combination of classic cars, a pleasure park, camping, and
Saturday nigh entertainment made our first event a great success. We included items from the
'Carry On Capri Camping' events staged in the late '90's (hosted by the Milton Keynes Capri Club) such as
team games and camping with your car so that BBQs and beers could be enjoyed without having to keep
moving cars from the campsite to the show field. The team games included team skiing, bonnet pulling,
tug-o-war, tyre lifts and alternator shot-putting. Clubs and individuals from across the country came and
had a fantastic first Wonderland experience.
In 2004 we had the silver MKIII 3.0S 'Professionals' Capri on display (above left)
In the early years we included the 'Mustang National Day' (above right) within Wonderland
Team games on Saturday were always an important part of the show
Mark Naylor with a great technique in the Alternator Shot Put 2006 (above left)
The Wolverhampton Capri Club with 'Big Al.' make a steady start in the 2006 Team Ski event (above)
In 2005 (above left) about 70 cars from the South Yorkshire based 'Misson Run' tour came through our show
as part of their annual run.
Thoughful CREW members Sean, Pete, Sam, Craig and Alison in 2006 (above right)
Check out how young we all look back in 2005 (above)!
PART 2: The move to Southwell Racecourse 2008 - 2011
By the end of the 2007 show, the owners of the Wonderland Pleasure Park told us that our event was too
big for the site and that we were taking up too much of the space allocated to his pleasure park visitors.
We had to move on and find a bigger venue!
Venues don't come much bigger in this area than Southwell Racecourse
- a vast sprawling site that had just been fully refurbished after severe floods a few years previously.
All the facilities were brand new - the bar; function room; loos; showers; immaculate lawns and parade ring area.
For our 2008 show we had moved into the BIG league!
One legacy of the floods were huge piles of sand that had once been part of the racecourse itself.
We decided to make a feature of the sand 'dunes' in 2008 and invited local 4x4 owners to put on a display
(above left) - they loved crawling all over the sand in their 4x4's.
We created an 'Avenue of Capri's in 2009 on the beautiful lawns infront of the racecourse buildings to
celebrate'40 Years of the Capri' (above right).
The celebration was boosted by the fantastic turnout of the Capri MKII Register (below left) and the arrival
from Holland of Bram & Hedi with their black MKII 2.3 JPS Capri and a genuine RS2600.(below right).
The 'party bus' was a restored London Routemaster double-deck bus (below left) kindly loaded to us by the
Nottingham Heritage centre at Ruddington. Driven to the racecourse in 2008 and 2009 by Pete Harrison.
Complete with upstairs bar, fridge, sink and sofa-style seating this was an ideal placeto have a
'Wonderland CREW' party - come rain or shine!
Team games were still as popular as ever in 2009 as Forsport demonstrate
with the Wheelie Bin Racing event (above right)
TVR Regional Days. From 2008 to 2016 we proudly included the TVR car Club East Midlands Regional Day
within our Wonderland show. Here in 2010 (above left) the TVR display went 'into overdrive' with a
40ft trailer-mounted display marquee/transporter plus a huge turnout of TVR's on the 'EXOTICA' display
area in front of the main racecourse grandstand (above rght).
In 2011 we celebrated "100 Years of Ford" at Southwell Racecourse by creating a 'Centenary Avenue'
along the paths towards the racecourse grandstand. Star of the show was the 1904 Ford Model C (Above right).
This is THE OLDEST car that we have ever had at a Wonderland event!
The owner took many passengers on rides around the racecourse. We had a relatively 'new' 1913 Model-T
and a 1934 Model-Y at the start of the 'centenary Avenue (below left)
with many other Fords through the years making up the celebration display (below right).
From 2008 to 2012 our Wonderland events included the TIPEC (The Independent Porsche Enthusiasts Club)
Regional Day - one of the biggest such Regional Days was in 2011 (below left).
In front of the grandstand we had the 'EXOTICA' - TVR's, Porche's, Americans etc
The photo I chose of the Mustangs (above right) is important because it sums up in one photo the elements of
Wonderland chapter 2 - Old v New cars - The Ford 'Pony' car Mustang has always been an important
part of our shows and is part of our event logo, with a racehorse in the background.
The Consultants band. Over the years, the band playing on Saturday night has been an important part of the
'Wonderland experience'.
We have had quiet a few bands play at Wonderland, none more so than 'The Consultants'.
The Consultants (above) played at all three show venues, playing rock cover tracks from the '60's through to
recent chart tracks and played at a total of seven of our Wonderland shows. Helen Hayward was first on the
dance floor (above) in 2009. Helen was a great help at organising and running many of the Wonderland shows.
Did you know: the first band to play at a Wonderland show, back in 2003, was called "Far Canal"
(yes, say that out alond and see what response you get!)
The CREW 2009 (above). The CREW photo at the end of each show has always been a great tradition of
ours. Rosemarie Revill (far left) and Chris Hayward (3rd from left with the large brim brown hat)
are sadly no longer with us but never forgotten.
All seemed well 'on the surface' at Wonderland 2011, but there were problems brewing.
Southwell racecourse was a brilliant venue with superb facilities, but the food and drinks were expensive and we
were not allowed to bring our cateres on site - so we took the brunt of complaints but could do nothing about it.
Southwell Racecourse is huge. we had some cars and campers parked so far away from each other that they
didn't even know that they were at the same show! the 'cosy' atmosphere was gone and the site was
too big to marshall effectively. The cost for the site fee and security was ramping-up each year,
so we had to find a new venue for Wonderland 2012. We started to look for a new venue and looked at
Nottingham Racecourse (too expensive), Sherwood Pines (too many trees),
Sherwood Forest Steam Railway (Too small),
Thoresby and Clumber Park (too many regulations) - but then one day ...
PART 3 - Ferry Farm, Hoveringham 2012 - 2020 and beyond
> Back in August 2011 I was reading a copy of my daughter's school magazine 'Primary Times'
and saw and advert for a farm park down by the river Trent at Hoveringham (5 miles from Nottingham),
called 'Ferry Farm'. it sounded like an nice place and was in a lovely part of Nottinghamshire
down by the river. I rang the farm to see if they had an events field that could be used for our
2012 car show.
The answer was "Yes" ... "come down and have a look" - so we did. The site was ideal -
not too far 'off the beaten track' - a beautiful setting - plenty of space -
a farm park for the kids - lovely restaurant - reasonable site fee - RESULT!
Over the following months we measured the entire site because the fields are anything but
regular in shape and thn we could plan for our 2012 event. The move to a 'farm' setting gave the event a
totally different 'feel' and we decided to replace the word "show" with "festival" to let everybody know that we
were aiming to bring back that great friendly atmosphere to our event - and it worked!
Our first year at Ferry Farm was 2012 - Olympic year.
To give the venue that 'festival' look, we added huge brightly coloured flags to the entrance field (below)
To give our event that 'festival' feel we built a huge 'Meguiar's stage in 2013 (below) on the back of a
40ft trailer and it has been the centre piece for our festivals ever since.
In 2013 we went patriotic and celebrated the ';Best of British' including a superb TVR Car Club Regional Day
display (below left) and our main stage grew in size with the addition of two huge Union flags on either side.
Our promotional material and logo even had more red, white and blue than ever before.
Sadly, 2013 was the last time that we ran the team games.
Team games were always a great part of our Wonderland Saturday afternoon entertainment.
With rising insurance costs, we could no longer justify the extra premium to cover the team games -
we would have had to take out a seperate, and expensive insurance policy just to cover the team games.
Jef leads the way in the Space Hopper race in the final team games in 2013 (above right).
Lewis Collins who played Bodie in the cult TV series 'The Professionals' died in 2013, so we thought it would
be a great tribute to the actor and to the TV series to have a display at Wonderland 2014 celebrating
"The Professionals".
We researched and pulled together a display of cars similar to those used in the TV series ranging from
Glynn Coxon's silver MKIII 3.0S Capri, Rover SD1; TR7, Triumph Dolomite and Rover P1. it made a brilliant
display by the main show field entrance (above). Also in 2014 we celebrated '45 Years of the Capri' with a great
turnout of Capri MKI, II and III's (below left) and it was'50 Years of the Ford Mustang' (below right).
The mud & rain years
The 2015 festival will always be best remembered for the scene below - towing the stranded catering truck
across the fields after heavy rain created a thin layer of slippery mud on the access road on Friday and
Saturday. Ironically, Sunday dawned with bright sunshine and was one of the best ever attended events!
Some of the most extreme machines came to Wonderland2015.Below left is a bright orange Stingray -
this was just AWESOME!below right was an equally amazing and seriously low-riding chromed and
customised orange American muscle machine.
A pair of Metro 6R4 rally cars (below) also roared on site in 2015 - you could hear them a mile away!
We must have upset the rain Gods a few years ago because in 2016 we were again 'blessed' with torrential
rain on the Friday afternoon - so much so, that our Club marquee was badly damaged and we had to
constantly push water from the roof of the main marquee to prevent that from collapse.
The weekend for Wonderland 2016 was also the Queen's 90th birthday so we knew that the public numbers
would be'down', but our event seemed to be as busy as ever.
We celebrated 30 Years of the Capri 280 in 2016 with a special display (above left) near the main show field
entrance. Rich put on a face-painted smile (above right) in the rain on Saturday. Mention should be made of
the great effort in 2016from the farm owner Graham for the tonnes of straw that he gave us to spread over
the muddy first field to keep the cars moving.
Gary Brady's customised Ford Angia V8 (above) is one of the most regular visitors to our Wonderland
eventsand was the 'Beast' in our "Beauty v Beast" feauture display in 2016.
We had to do something to break the cycle of rainy Wonderland weekends - so we moved the date into
July for 2017"So, did the gamble of moving the date into July work ?" ... "Oh Yes!"
Wonderland on July 8th & 9th was a stunning success! Good weather reports the previous week made sure
that wehad a bumper turnout of visitors and exhibitors - including WWII Jeeps (below).
Endangered Species:This display (above right) was very well received abd attracted a lot of attention in
2017. It was an area where you could view examples of vehicles with less than 1% of their production run
still on the road.
Above is a mega-rare 1.3HL Morris Ital owned by Trevor and Brian Ford - one of the stars of 2017.
Fordsport: The Fordsport club have supported our festival since the early days back at the Pleasure Park.
Their imagination and effort has no limits hen it comes to their Club stand. The bars and structures that
they build are works of art. If the world was full of enthusiastic members such as those at Fordsport then it
would be a very friendly, colourful, well presented 'planet party'! Above left is Fordsport's 2017 party bar.
In 2018 we went 'Back to the 80's and featured many of the 80's icons such as Dave Betts'
Delorean (above) and Simon's collection of C5's (above left). Again, glorious ice cream weather all weekend
(below left).
Radio Romantic (Ruth and Joe) played in the main marquee on Saturday night -
they were one of the best acts that we have ever had play at Wonderland - so good that we have
re-booked them for 2021.
One of the craziest combinations of vehicles one one photo taken at Wonderland must be the one above.
In 2018 the most weird winner of a 'Saturday Car of the night' trophy went to the V8-powered milk float
(above) if the owner reads this web page, we really must see you back at Wonderland again please!
The East German Trabant (above) was another 'first' at Wonderland 2018. With the gorgeous weather we had
an unbelievable number of last minute bookings from both traders and exhibitors.
2019: The best year ever
"So what was the best year ever at Wonderland?" ... in my opinion, 2019 was the 'best year ever' ...
why?
The Capri Timeline that greeted visitors on the Sunday morning was truly awesome!
It took a lot of planning and work on the day but the end result sent a shiver down your spine.
Over 40 Capri's from 1969 to 1986 plus iconic models made a
Capri 50 years display to remember forever (below).
Above; Andy's drone shot of the Capri 50 Years Celebration Timeline at Wonderland 2019.
Chris Taylor's 1969 MKI started off the timeline (above right). More photos from 2019 can be found on the
slideshow further up this page.
The incredible Capri Club Wonderland Show CREW 2019 who make all this possible!
Above (3rd photo across on the far right) - Neal with his CREW cap on checks the entry forms at
Wonderland 2015. Neal was one of our great Wonderland crew characters. RIP Neal 4/5/17
" WONDERLAND has always been, and always will be as much about the people as it is about the
cars. It's not just a Capri show - it's not a Ford show - it's a celebration of motoring and those who
are pasionate about it. The festival is for every age group of vehicle and owner. It does not matter what
age or condition you or your vehicle are in - we love to see you! "
A huge "THANK YOU" to all our CREW members, exhibitors, clubs, traders, sponsors, visitors and
to our photographers, who over the years have helped to make our event the success that it is today!
Alan & all the Wonderland CREW
Festival updates are always available here on line www.capriclub2000.co.uk
Facebook: MansfieldNottsCapriClub
Call/text me (Alan) on 0771 418 1250 for an update or just to have a chat