TWO features caught the eye of visitors to the Marches Transport Festival.

It was staged at Ludlow Castle alongside the Spring Food Festival.

There were more than 180 vehicles dating from 1984 or earlier.

Most of them were on display in the outer bailey of the castle but there was also a collection of tractors, commercial vehicles and motorbikes out the front.

But perhaps the two things that stood out was that most of the cars were British covering a time when the ‘home’ motor industry was a major world player.

The other was that there was an absence of diesel engines as the cars on display came from an era in which ‘oil burners’ were associated with commercial vehicles, buses and taxis.

A 1917 Ford was the oldest car on the list and one of the most interesting was a 1938 MG VA Tourer that was displayed at the Geneva Motor Show in 1938.

Many of the cars had a great story behind them including the 1933 Morris Tourer that has been restored over the past 20 years.

One of the most stylish was a 1927 Rolls Royce Barker Tourer that had stood unused for 30 years.

The period from 1949 to 1959 was dominated by great British marques such as Austin, Bristol, MG Morris, Jaguar, Standard and Sunbeam.

It was ironic that the one German car from this period was a 1959 Henkel Bubble Car.

Always popular were the modern classics that included a number of examples of the beautiful and iconic Jaguar E-type.

There was a 1969 Rolls Royce Silver Shadow Drop Head Coupe that was at one time owned by Lord Hartley Shawcross, the attorney general in the 1945 to 1951 Labour government and the chief UK prosecutor at the Nuremburg war crimes trial.

On Sunday morning some of the cars took part in an annual run between Leominster and Ludlow that demonstrated that many of the vehicles are in working order despite the passing years.