Mid Wales model car museum in the driving seat for Bargain Hunt

A Mid Wales museum, which is home to a collection of around 5,000 model cars, is to feature on the popular BBC One TV antiques series Bargain Hunt.

Show presenter Charlie Ross, an antiques expert and auctioneer, paid a visit with the film crew to the Cloverlands Model Car Museum at its new home in Llanfair Caereinion recently.

Ross, who is also well known from BBC’s Antiques Road Trip and Flog It, set a new USA record in 2018 when he sold a1935 Duesenberg SSJ, formerly owned by actor Gary Cooper, for $22 million.

His visit to Cloverlands Model Car Museum, which moved from Montgomery to Welshpool and Llanfair Light Railway’s base earlier this year, was part of filming for a new series of Bargain Hunt, having previously stopped off at Oswestry Antiques Fair.

He quizzed the Cloverlands trustees about cars in the collection as diverse as a Delahaye, Rolls-Royce, Fiat and Benz. The Benz was driven 50 miles in Germany by Bertha Benz in 1886, nine years before the first car was seen in Wales.

The Bargain Hunt episode featuring the museum, which Ross described as “a wonderful collection with so many memories”, will be broadcast in the next six months.

Museum trustee Bruce Lawson said: “Charlie was very knowledgeable and quite taken aback by the rarity of some of the models we have in the museum. For filming, we highlighted six or seven models, some dating to 1911.”

The museum opened in its new home in June and has increased footfall tenfold, with up to 50 visitors daily. Opening hours are 11am to 4.15pm at weekends and group visits are arranged by appointment.

A selection of more than 1,000 replica models is for sale at the museum for visitors who wish to take away a memento.

Originally established at Montgomery Institute in 2015, the museum began with a collection of around 2,000 models amassed by late motoring historian and model maker Gillian Rogers, of Trefnanney, near Welshpool, who sadly died on December 27 last year.

Ten other collections have since been loaned or given to the museum, including one from Canada, 1,000 Grand Prix and touring cars and a fine display of American cars.

Mr Lawson provides the narration for a video film about the museum, which was produced as a tribute to Gillian and all the sponsors and friends at its first home in Montgomery.

Both Cloverlands and the Welshpool and Llanfair Light Railway are members of MWT Cymru, which represents more than 600 tourism and hospitality businesses across Powys, Ceredigion and Southern Snowdonia.