By Peter Orosz, Jalopnik

Take a secret 19th century velodrome in the heart of Budapest, a handful of vintage cars and bikes and a group of petrolheads dressed in revival gear to brave the Siberian chill and you've got yourself a perfect afternoon. We went along for the ride on the terrifying banked oval in a 1967 Autobianchi Bianchina.

You may be forgiven for never having heard of the Millenáris Velodrom, a bicycle arena built in 1896 to celebrate the 1,000th anniversary of the Hungarians streaming across Verecke Pass to colonize the land beyond. I've lived in Budapest 10 years and hadn't heard of it until two weeks ago, and I met many native Budapesters in the days after who were similarly ignorant.

Perhaps due to its low profile, the velodrome is not an easy place to discover randomly. It also explains its vague sense of abandonment. But the engineering seems solid. After 115 years of battled existence -- where "battled" includes politics, real estate schemes and direct artillery hits during the Siege of Budapest -- the track welcomed a ragtag band of veteran cars and motorcycles on a windswept April day.

The event was the launch of this year's Oldtimer Expo, Budapest’s annual veteran show. It isn't senior citizens who are celebrated, but cars. Oldtimer, pronounced as if in English, is a Hungarian term for classic cars 30 years or older.

The stars of the show were supposed to be a pair of Bugatti Type 35 race cars from Austria, but they couldn’t make it. No worries though. Events like this are never about history, but visceral joy. And noise. Glorious glorious noise. Nobody could complain about the noise at the Millenáris.

Above:

The Bugatti-ish blue car is a Salmson, made in the 1920s by a French company known for its nine-cylinder water-cooled radial aircraft engines. It made a pretty, easygoing burble of a noise, but was nothing compared to the old motorcycles that followed. Photo: Peter Orosz.