MITCAR 2024
22 sep 2024
|AROC
Join us for Midlands Italian Car Day 2024
Midlands Italian Car Day – or MITCAR for short – the all-Italian marque event arranged by our AROC East Midlands team, will gather at the fabulous Kedleston Hall near Derby on 22nd September for another jamboree of all things Italian.
Kedleston Hall is a beautiful National Trust 18th-century mansion with Adam interiors, colonial history and a vast parkland to explore, so is great for families with huge space for MITCAR.
Information about the day
The £12 ‘car’ ticket for MITCAR permits all occupants admission to the event and the extensive grounds, café/restaurant and shop. Admission to the beautiful house is entirely optional, and available to MITCAR ticket buyers at a special rate of £5 per person, payable on the day, at the Hall’s ticket office on production of the MITCAR ticket or the event programme that will be given to you on entry to the event.
MITCAR’s allocated space at Kedleston Hall is for display of Italian Cars only which will be parked by marque – i.e. Alfa, Abarth, Fiat, Maserati etc, all in groups. Our MITCAR marshals will direct you on site.
NOTE: non-Italian cars must park in the public parking area. Disabled parking is near that area. Owners of non-Italian cars can still buy a MITCAR ticket and benefit from the special optional house admission rate if desired.
For MITCAR, people do not have to be paying members of any Car Club, though many such Clubs are invited along and we see some quite superb cars alongside the many Alfa Romeos; everything from Fiat, Abarth, Innocenti, Lancia, Maserati, even Ferraris and Lamborghinis, and from spotless Concours cars to family daily drivers, classics and the very latest models, even cars mid-restoration! It’s a veritable feast for the Italian car enthusiast.
Picnics are permitted, no barbecues, dogs are allowed in the grounds on a leash. Kedleston Hall is a non-smoking site.
ACCESS TO VENUE this year is from the main entrance on Kedleston Road. This is signposted. Sat Nav use post code DE22 5JD, What Three Words reference: bats.mason.copies.
MITCAR opens at 10am, please DO NOT ARRIVE BEFORE THEN. The house will open from 11am. Exit will be a separate signed exit route. There are no width restrictions or speed bumps but please beware on-coming traffic on the narrow roads in and out of the MITCAR site.
COMPETITION
All Italian cars at MITCAR are treated as special, and all are in with a shout of a prize selected by our team of experts based on factors such as rarity and presentation. There is also a PUBLIC VOTE via smartphone for the car of the day, which wins the prestigious Bryan Alexander ‘Camshaft Trophy’, which was fashioned by Bryan from steel engine components back in 2000. There are many other prize categories too!
Prize-giving will be at the AROC Gazebo after lunch, so be sure to check the timings on your event handout to be back to hear the winners AND the prize draw from the entries cast!
We are very pleased to announce that our friends from RESEARCH GARAGE NUNEATON, the Italian Specialists for Alfa Romeo, Fiat and Abarth will be supporting our big event again too and sponsoring some very generous prizes!
MITCAR’s background
MITCAR came into being in 2001 as the Brainchild of Bryan Alexander, the then Chairman of the AROC East Midlands Section and also area organiser for the Ferrari Owners club, supported by John Griffiths the AROC East Midlands Secretary and the team there from the off. Bryan sadly passed away in 2019 but the event continues unabated!
The first MITCAR show saw 170 Italian cars gather, also at Kedleston Hall, and since then has visited over 20 venues right across the Midlands. The show returned to Kedleston in October 2022 with over 400 cars present, a quite superb day, and it proved so popular and such great value, that it returns again this year.
About Kedleston Hall
Kedleston Hall is a beautiful Grade 1 listed building now owned by The National Trust, and after a hugely successful event there in 2022 we were delighted they agreed to allow our cars to again be displayed in their beautiful parkland area adjacent to the hall itself.
Kedleston Hall is a neo-classical manor house and seat of the Curzon family, located in Kedleston, Derbyshire, approximately 4 miles north-west of Derby. The medieval village of Kedleston was moved in 1759 by Nathaniel Curzon to make way for the manor.
The gardens and grounds, as they appear today, are largely the concept of Robert Adam. Adam was asked by Nathaniel Curzon in 1758 to “take in hand the deer park and pleasure grounds”. The former gardens designed by Charles Bridgeman were swept away in favour of a more natural-looking landscape. Bridgeman’s canals and geometric ponds were metamorphosed into serpentine lakes. The whole thing is stunning to behold today, and makes a wonderful backdrop for a relaxing car show in the countryside.
You can found out more about Kedleston Hall at this link.
Kedleston Hall can be found at Kedleston Road, near Quarndon, Derby, Derbyshire, DE22 5JH
