One of the best things about being in the privileged position to visit a lot of overseas classic car shows, is, depending upon the country, finding a bewildering array of cars that are commonplace in your host nation, but barely seen in the UK.
It is also perversely comforting to realise with some of them that, when you see a long-dead manufacturer's entire range from start to finish in one place, even in countries that still have a thriving motor industry, the death knell has rung for so many more. Just as it did in Britain.
The parallels with so many defunct British manufacturers – start small, get big, get swallowed up by a basking shark of a company, disappear – are everywhere.
This is one of the many reasons that I find Techno Classica in Essen so enthralling. Quite apart from its vast scale, the biggest disparity with Britain's best shows is that huge homegrown manufacturer presence, with Mercedes-Benz, VW and BMW taking entire halls to show off the historic and current wares from their own brands and those they have subsumed.
While such stands might venerate the fallen, such as Wanderer or Horch in the case of the Volkswagen Audi Group, other pockets within the 20-odd halls celebrate the lost marques on a much more modest scale.
And in Germany there is one in particular that I always look out: Glas.
