RETIRED Lanarkshire mechanic Jim Muir is used to admiring glances when he drives down the road.

Well not so much for Jim himself, but for the car he is driving - a fiery red Corvette Stingray sports car from America which has that rasping roar of a giant V8 engine that you've heard in one thousand American movies. "Twelve miles to the gallon," says Jim. "Unless you boot it."

Off the road Jim completes the look on the Stingray with Texan number plates. He loves America. He has just never gone there. "The wife thinks we'll get shot if we go there, so we've never been," he explains.

I'm sitting in the left-hand driver's seat staring at the impossibly long hood wondering how you park this thing as the front dips down so you can't actually see it. The speedometer goes up to 160mph. "How fast does it go?" I ask. "I don't know," says Jim. "I've not taken it on a race circuit. The nose lifts when you give it the boot."

Jim just loves owning and preserving a classic car. He doesn't even drive it much. Up to 3,000 miles a year is the limit in order to qualify for the classic car insurance which is a surprisingly low £138 a year. Owners of classic cars tend not to take risks with them.

On Saturday Jim's Stingray was on display in the grounds of the Erskine hospital as part of a classic cars show to raise funds for the hospital which has been looking after Scotland's older and injured ex-servicemen for nearly 100 years. It's simple really. Car clubs bring their models to show them off, and folk pay a couple of quid to wander round looking at them. One thousand visitors? Two thousand pounds, thank you very much. A passing mention for Rangers fans. Last year the Rangers Supporters Erskine Appeal raised over £106,000, and they will hope to beat that this year.

This really is a trip down memory tarmacadamed road. The jolt at my age is realising that four of the first five cars I owned are now on display as classic cars. Yes, there's the Hillman Imp, the Triumph Herald, the early Mini, and the MGB GT. No Triumph Dolomites though. Probably not quite a classic then.

There is a lime green Ford Cortina with the owner even fitting furry dice below the mirror. One of the Morris Minors has the point-making sticker in the rear window which tells other road users: "You may pass me, but will you outlast me?"

So classic cars are not just the shiny Daimlers and Rolls-Royces of car museums, but the everyday cars of just a few years ago. There is a Ford Capri club. Billy McCreath is there with his '81 Capri 2.8 which he bought "for my big six oh" two years back.

Folk get misty-eyed looking at it. "If it was a former boyfriend's car, ladies tend to get all nostalgic about the rear seats for some reason," says Billy.

Benefits of owning a classic? "While a rattle would be annoying in a modern car, in a classic it's just part of the charm," he says.

Billy bought the car for £5,000 and it probably won't depreciate. Mind you, the previous owner had spent £10,000 restoring it. That's the thing. There is a value for your car which does not take into account the time and money you have spent on it. The highest quality resprays can be as much as £7,000.

The owners themselves bring camp chairs and sit around exchanging stories of their cars. Some of them can get into esoteric conversations about cam shafts and manifolds and where's the best place to pick up spares. Others just chat about the weather or how busy the roads are. It's simply a pleasant day out amidst like-minded people. There are flasks of tea and sandwiches being passed around.

The owners of the classic military vehicles tend to favour pitching ex-army tents to sit in and appear slightly aloof from the owners of road cars.

A visitor goes up to the owner of a beautifully turned out dark blue Hillman Imp and tells him: "I worked at Linwood." He says it in a low voice as if going to confessional. He was referring to the Rootes car plant at Linwood where suspicious ex-shipyard workers found it hard to cope with the mind-numbing boredom of the assembly line and the thick-headed American management brought in to oversee it. Just ask an ex-worker about the "Crazy K", the production building where workers skived and pulled stunts to thwart their unresponsive bosses. It really was a lifetime ago.

Further back, the history books tell us Glasgow had one of the first car factories in the world. Back in the 1890s George Johnston was working on an experimental steam-powered tramcar for Glasgow Corporation to replace the horse-drawn trams. Alas the prototype caught fire on its test run in front of the bosses and the scheme was abandoned.

But George was approached by Sir William Arrol, boss of the big Glasgow bridge-building firm, to try making a car, and thus the Arrol-Johnston car company was set up in Camlachie in Glasgow's East End. Funny how the money man always gets his name first. Eventually the company moved to Dumfries, but costs were high, the production numbers were limited, and eventually it closed. Probably too much ahead of its time.

Down it Scotstoun there was Albion Motors which went from car production to buses and lorries, but after a string of ownership changes it too closed.

But even amongst the heady claims of the referendum debate, no one is suggesting building a car factory in Scotland. As the Proclaimers so presciently put it: "Linwood no more."