Jolly good show — British Field Day at Liberty Park Saturday

British automobile fans are invading Liberty Park Saturday, and they're bringing their LBCs, or Little British Cars. You know, the MGs, Triumphs, Austin Healeys and others a lot of people laughed at 40 years ago because of their perceived unreliability and quirky mechanical problems.

Apparently few people are laughing these days as the surviving LBCs have shown quite an appreciation, monetarily and through fan clubs, and their owners say they really aren't difficult to keep running if you know how to fix them.

The Saturday event is called a British Field Day rather than a car show, because the British use the term. It runs from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m.

Now in its 16th year, the Field Day is held under the umbrella of the British Motor Club of Utah and includes the Great Basin Land Rover Club, Wasatch Mountain Jaguar Club, Utah British Bike Club, Mini Motoring Club of Utah, Bonneville Austin Healey Club and Utah British Isles Association.

British Field Day is the brainchild of Bill Davis, who said it was something he always wanted to do. "British car shows are very popular nationwide with a high enthusiasm factor. I was working at St. Mark's Cathedral at the time, which had lots of open green space. The cathedral's emergency food pantry was Hildegard's Food Pantry, and this started as a fund-raiser for it. Several things in the universe converged at the right time to make it happen."

Over the years, the money raised has gone to different charities around town, as much as $5,000 a year. The field day has moved from St. Mark's to Pioneer Park and last year to Liberty Park.

This year Davis expects between 100 and 120 cars will be entered and about 40 vintage motorcycles. The event draws 1,000 or more spectators annually.

Davis said he's always liked British cars, and now he owns an Internet business, Great Basin Rovers, selling parts for vintage Land Rovers. His collection consists of 30-40 Land Rovers, a couple of MGs, Morris Minors, Austin Healeys, a Triumph motorcycle and a couple of black London cabs.

His answer to the question of why anyone would want to drive a British car is simple: "Their appeal is that they have a lot of character." Although many British sports cars were sold in this country in the 1950s and 1960s, there weren't a lot of specialty mechanics to service them, he said. "People would take them to regular mechanics, and with the hit-and-miss quality of mechanics, there were a lot of hack jobs done on those cars."