Bicester Scramble – The UKs Most Diverse Car Show?

I’m not entirely sure who thought flying into Birmingham at 8am on a Saturday was a good idea—but sure look, that’s exactly what Nathan and I did. The plan was to go over for Bicester Scramble on the Sunday, but when you land that early with nothing else booked, the only logical thing to do is start driving and see where the day takes you.

Naturally, we went straight to Caffeine & Machine - The Hill. I’d seen it online for years, and it always looked like one of those spots where car culture doesn’t feel forced—it just happens. Safe to say, it lived up to the hype. We rolled in just in time for breakfast, and even before we ordered food, I’d already seen about six cars I wanted to take up the road.

There’s something really calming about that place. Good coffee, good food, and good people. It’s not a car meet, it’s just a bunch of like-minded heads hanging around and talking nonsense in the best way possible. You can have a lifted Land Cruiser parked next to a Singer-style 911 and nobody blinks. It’s just cars. I could’ve stayed there for hours, but we had bigger plans and that place deserves its own write-up in truth.

From there we headed to Silverstone for the British GT Championship, which was absolutely class. It’s been years since I stood trackside watching serious racing like that, and it hits different in person. The noise, the commitment, the smell of hot brakes and race fuel in the air—it’s addictive.

You can tell the teams aren’t messing around. Everyone’s flat out, tyres getting chucked around, splitters being scraped, drivers getting stuck in. GT3 cars doing what they were built to do. I felt like a 12-year-old again, absolutely buzzing off the whole thing. It being the Saturday of the race weekend, we also had the freedom of the paddock that day, so getting up close and personal with Ginetta & GB3 cars was easily done and much appreciated.

By the time the last race wrapped up we were cooked. So we made our way to Bicester, got some food (couldn’t even tell you what I ate(it was beef & ale pie), I was that tired), and then straight to bed. Not exactly rockstar behaviour, but we were up early for Scramble and knew we’d need the energy.

Sunday morning rolled around and we were in the gates of Bicester Heritage not long after 9am. And… I genuinely don’t think I was ready for what we were about to walk into.

I’ve been to a lot of car events over the years, but this was different. Scramble is on another level entirely. It’s not just big, it’s rich. Not money-wise (although there was plenty of that too), but in variety, character, and stories. You’d walk past a freshly restored Land Rover 110, turn a corner and be staring down a Le Mans prototype, then look behind you and spot a rally-battered Celica GT-Four. It was wild.

Old stuff, new stuff, weird stuff. Hot rods, drift cars, Dakar trucks, Aston Martins, classic Audis, a bunch of Porsche GT cars, and the nicest lineup of BMW M cars I’ve ever seen in my life. One minute you’re chatting to someone about how much their tyres cost, the next you’re listening to a bloke explain how he rebuilt a 1920s Bentley engine from scratch. It was automotive overload in the best way.

And everyone there was sound. I got into a full-blown conversation about wheel fitment and tyre profiles with a guy standing next to a chopped-up E30 M3, and ended up chatting to another guy about how certain wheels can make or break the whole look of a car. You know when you meet people and within thirty seconds you’re knee-deep in offset chat like you’ve known each other for years? It was like that, all day.

Being honest, it made me a little jealous of the UK car scene. We’ve got passion in Ireland—loads of it—but the range and variety at Scramble was unreal. These lads are spoiled in the best way. There’s more proper metal in one hangar at Bicester than most shows over here put together.

We wandered around for hours, barely stopping. Every time I thought I’d seen it all, we’d turn a corner and find a pair of Group B cars, or a Jaguar XJR-9, or some bizarre homebuilt 4x4 with jet-style switches and a roof tent. It just kept going. I was shattered by the end of it, but in the best way. The kind of tired you only get from walking for hours and having your brain lit up with ideas the whole time.

We flew home that night feeling fairly smug about how good the weekend had been… right up until we got to the airport car park and realised Nathan’s tyre was completely flat. Classic. I thought we were about to wrap up the perfect trip—and instead we were stuck outside the terminal in the cold, rummaging in my boot for an old can of tyre weld, like a pair of half-dead rally mechanics.

Eventually got it sorted, and limped home in one piece.

All in all? Top weekend. One of those trips that reminds you exactly why we do this stuff. You get on a plane at stupid o’clock, chase cars around the UK for 48 hours, talk nonsense with strangers about wheel specs, eat good food, see the best builds of your life, and come home absolutely wrecked—but happier than ever.

Would do it all again in a heartbeat.