Classic car events in October 2026: the last month before the covers go on

Table of Contents

• The first weekend: hills, breakfasts and a sold-out Scramble
• The second weekend belongs to two wheels and Silverstone
• Formula Ford comes home to Kent
• London Motor Week, and the oldest cars on the road
• Ten auctions, and one very busy Wednesday

September was the month everyone wanted and nobody could do all of. October is different. There are fewer fixtures, the clashes are gentler and the ones that remain are the events run by people who would turn up in sleet. That is no bad thing. The best of the autumn calendar has always been the stuff that does not need a heatwave to justify itself.

The full list lives on our events page and the auction calendar. What follows is the pick of it.

The first weekend: hills, breakfasts and a sold-out Scramble

The month opens at Prescott on Saturday 3 and Sunday 4 October, where the Bugatti Owners' Club and the Bugatti Trust are running the Engineering & Innovation Festival: two days of proper hill climbing, with rounds of the Fassi Classic Speed Championship and the New Barn Interclub series, alongside university teams, Formula Student cars and engineering exhibitors. Damian Bradley, who knows a thing or two about Pikes Peak, is among the speakers, as is Tim Dutton. Adults are £12 in advance or £15 on the gate, and under-16s go free.

I rather like the idea. Ettore Bugatti was an engineer first and a showman a close second, and a hill that bears his owners' club's name is a fitting place to ask what the next lot of engineers will build.

Sunday the 4th has two breakfasts worth getting up for. The Haynes Breakfast Club at Sparkford has a German theme this month, 8am to 11am, £5 for a display or spectator pass (£7 if you leave it to the day before). It must be booked in advance; there are no sales on the gate.

Bicester has the other one, and you are too late for it. The October Scramble at Bicester Motion marks fifty years since RAF Bicester closed in 1976, with the cars of that year on the theme list: the Mercedes W123, the Lotus Esprit, the Rover SD1 and the Porsche 924, plus a nod to James Hunt and Barry Sheene. It has sold out. I mention it only so you know to book the next one the moment it opens.

The second weekend belongs to two wheels and Silverstone

The Classic Motorcycle Mechanics Show fills the Staffordshire County Showground on Saturday 10 and Sunday 11 October. It is the big classic bike show of the autumn, and this year it comes with a serious auction attached (more on that below).

The same weekend the HSCC holds its Silverstone Finals at Silverstone on the 10th and 11th, with the Derek Bell Trophy on the bill. End-of-season club racing is my favourite kind. The championships are settled or about to be, and the drivers race like people who have nothing left to save the car for.

And on the Sunday morning, Shelsley Walsh opens its gates for the Breakfast Club, 8.30am to 1pm. Free to Midland Automobile Club members, £5 a head for everyone else, and you need to register in advance. After the club's 125th celebrations last month, this is the gentle version: coffee, bacon and a hill that has been climbed in anger since 1905.

Formula Ford comes home to Kent

The Formula Ford Festival at Brands Hatch on Saturday 24 and Sunday 25 October is the 55th running of the thing, and the organisers are calling it the Centenary Edition. That is not Formula Ford's centenary (it is not that old) but Brands Hatch's, which turns a hundred this year. It is also fifty years since the Festival moved to Kent, and there is a display in the Kentagon marking forty years since Roland Ratzenberger won it in 1986.

For the uninitiated: two days on the Indy circuit, heats and semi-finals building to a final, dozens of near-identical cars and very few inches between them. Half the grid will never be heard of again and one or two will, and nobody in the grandstand can tell you which. Weekend adult tickets are £26, a single day £17, with free parking and free grandstands. That is the best value racing of the month, and quite possibly of the year.

The same weekend, the National Motorcycle Museum near Solihull runs Museum LIVE on the 24th and 25th, with a preview of the bikes in H&H's sale there on the Wednesday after.

London Motor Week, and the oldest cars on the road

The month ends in London. On Saturday 31 October the Royal Automobile Club's St James's Motoring Spectacle takes over Pall Mall from 10am to 3pm. It is free, with more than 150 vehicles and the St James's Concours, and this year there is a Formula One display marking the centenary of Britain's first Grand Prix, run at Brooklands in 1926. We wrote about that race and its hundred years in the summer. Over 12,000 people came last year, so arrive early if you want to see anything other than the back of somebody's head.

Then on Sunday 1 November, the London to Brighton Veteran Car Run, now carrying the RM Sotheby's name, sends around 400 pre-1905 cars down the A23 from Hyde Park. The world's oldest surviving Rolls-Royce is back among them this year. Strictly speaking it is a November fixture, but it is the full stop on October and I would not dream of leaving it out. Stand anywhere along the route with a flask. It is free, it is magnificent and some of those cars will not make it, which is half the point.

Ten auctions, and one very busy Wednesday

There are ten October sales in the auction diary. Manor Park Classics opens the month with its MPC South sale at Marchwood, Southampton, at noon on Saturday 3 October, and returns north for a motorcycle sale at Runcorn on Friday 16 October and cars on Saturday the 17th.

Sunday 11 October is the weekend's big one. Bonhams holds its Autumn Stafford Sale at the Classic Motorcycle Mechanics Show, starting at 11am with 207 lots. The Johnny Cecotto Collection headlines, led by his 1978 F750 title-winning works Yamaha OW31 at £220,000 to £300,000, and there are machines from the John Surtees family collection, Steve McQueen's 1972 Husqvarna at £30,000 to £50,000 and a 1930 Brough Superior SS100 at £160,000 to £220,000. The same day, Hampson sells at Winnington Hall in Northwich from noon.

H&H Classics is at the Pavilion Gardens in Buxton on Wednesday 14 October, one of the handsomest salerooms in the country. WB & Sons follows at Killingworth on Saturday 24 October at 11am.

Then comes Wednesday 28 October, which does to the salerooms what the 12th did in September. H&H sells motorcycles at the National Motorcycle Museum from 10am. Brightwells closes its timed sale from 11.01am, having opened it on the 24th: 48 lots, led by a 1955 Jaguar XK140 at £53,000 to £55,000, a 1983 two-door Range Rover at £50,000 to £52,000 and a 1959 Alvis TD21 drophead at £36,000 to £40,000. And Mathewsons starts a three-day marathon at Thornton-le-Dale, roughly 300 lots a day from 10am on the 28th, 29th and 30th.

The month's biggest sale comes last. RM Sotheby's holds The London Auction at The Peninsula on Saturday 31 October, preview from 10am and bidding from 4pm, the same day as the Pall Mall show a short walk away.

After a Revival sale where three cars in four sold, most of them cheaply, October is a useful second reading. A two-door Range Rover estimated alongside an XK140 at Brightwells says something about where younger money is going. Whether London's buyers agree is the question we will be answering in November.

The clocks go back on the 25th. Get out while the light lasts.