The Royal Automobile Club's Historic Awards are hosted at the organisation’s prestigious Pall Mall club house and are an annual set of accolades to recognise excellence and outstanding contributions to the UK's historic motoring and motorsport industries. The awards reward achievement and innovation by highlighting and celebrating the wide range of companies, events, associations, and individuals responsible for influencing and driving the British motoring movement.

At this year’s glitzy evening, held on 24 November, The TR Register won the category for Innovation in Historic Motoring for the launch of the European Breakdown App. The award was received by Wayne Scott, the TR Register’s Press Officer who built the app, and Mick Forey who was instrumental in pooling the data from across Europe and its subsequent promotion to overseas affiliated clubs.

Also present was Allan Westbury, TR Register Chairman and Dave Burgess, TR Register Vice-Chairman, both driving forces behind the initiative and regulars on the annual European Meetings with affiliated clubs overseas, from where the demand for the technology initially grew. 

The award category was aimed at rewarding those who had turned great ideas into solutions, harnessing technology and created initiatives that enrich the industry or evolving products and services that meet the ever-demanding appetite of the growing historic motoring and motorsport scene.

Lee McKenzie, TV presenter who hosted the awards ceremony said, 

“The TR Register European Breakdown App is a remarkable achievement by a relatively small concern that should embolden owners to get out there in their classics and support specialist garages, too. That each garage is user-ranked helps give owners peace of mind, it is free to use, plus it has a very user-friendly design and the potential to offer more services in the future – it was only launched in July!”

The judging panel were made up of key figures from the historic motoring industry. The lead judge for the innovation category Lizzie Pope, Deputy Editor of Classic and Sportscar Magazine said, 

“Our judges were delighted to receive a healthy number of nominations in the Innovation category, all of which represented great ideas, products and programmes that are of huge benefit to the classic car industry. The TR Register’s European Breakdown App is a clever idea, very well executed and the fact that it can be reskinned for use by other clubs makes it a very community-minded innovation.”

You can read more about the European Breakdown App, and obtain the download links by clicking here.