Many of us will have attended some or all of the annual Showbus events that have been held since 1993 at the Imperial War Museum airfield and collection at Duxford in Cambridgeshire. Situated adjacent to Junction 10 of the M11 Motorway this major event in the bus rallying calendar has provided in more recent years around the three hundred mark of attending buses and coaches. Hopefully from the organiser’s perspective they have provided something for everyone. I know that on my visits it has been hard to see absolutely everything that turns up over a mile or so of the hard standing.

However, whilst Duxford has become synonymous with the event, how many know the origins, which are indeed located way back in the last century. It was in 1973 that as an attendee at Brunel University in West London, Martin Isles proposed to hold a bus rally within the grounds of that location. It was a very cold day in January that year. Yes January a very cold month but not necessarily the wettest (there was plenty of that to come in later years), and a mere handful or so of vehicles made it to Brunelzebub, an annual event organised by the university. But as they say, from little acorns, etc. Buoyed by the success of the event the organiser deemed to hold another event the following year. Unfortunately that coincided in 1974 with the Miner’s Strike and other major events and was duly cancelled. However, help was at hand and the event was rescued and incorporated into the nearby local Hillingdon Show held in June that year. The name Showbus was created for this event and since then the title has remained much the same.

For the next few years this became a regular event on the rally calendar with sponsorship provided by National Express. This took us to 1979 when the Grey Green coaching company took over the sponsorship and the following year transferred the event to the large outdoor leisure complex at Thorpe Park in Surrey during September. In 1981 the event was to become part of the Lambeth Show held in Brockwell Park but this was the time of the Brixton riots and hurriedly the event was transferred at the eleventh hour to the Purfleet premises of the Ensign company. That then became the last occasion the event was held in London or local surroundings.

For the time being this piece covers the event from inception to 1981 at Purfleet.

So in January 1973 and a cold photographer set about recording just one or two of the vehicles present before he hightailed it back to the warmth of his then North West London home. The very first bus photographed was an Eastern Coachworks bodied Bristol KSW formerly operated by the Eastern National Omnibus Company. 1428 had been entered by local coach company Valliant-Silverline and sported a rather gaudy all-over advertising that had been used to promote the then European Tour of Paul McCartney’s Wings pop group.

I recall that few other pictures were taken on the day and any that I have are squirrelled away in the deep recesses of my collection, probably still too cold to venture out to the light of day.

So we move over and onto the showground at Uxbridge where the event was held from 1974-1979 then via Thorpe Park eventually to Purfleet.

In September 1982 with part sponsorship from Leyland Bus the event transferred northwards to the Home Counties seat of the Duke and Duchess of Bedford. But more of that in Part II HERE