Our second invite to an event in as many weeks saw us leave Garage Awesome HQ and head 150 miles south to the bottom of the M1 and to our nation’s capital, and more specifically, the legendary meeting venue; The Ace Cafe!
This week our hosts were BritishMods, admin Stu and club staff Steve and Marie had made contact with us and invited us to make the trip to cover their event, and as the team had used one of our photos as the event’s flyer background, how could we say no?
Now each event has its own style, and each club like to do things with their own twist, and BritishMods certainly go for all out action! With a load of top show cars mixed with some big bhp monsters filling the main car park, accompanied by tunes from the DJ and some big installs.
The meet started fairly quietly, with the cars slowly parking up heading in to the Cafe itself for some warming food and drink! Stu then came and found us, explaining there had been hold ups on the North circular road, (and let’s be honest…when isn’t there?) and that a few convoys were battling the traffic to get there!
In the mean time it gave us a chance to mess with the cameras, we’re not pro’s, we’re still very much learning, especially in the difficult light conditions, so it was ideal to drop in a little practice before the masses arrived.
Some lovely cars were subjected to our sometimes ‘questionable’ photography; notably a pair of flawless show standard Saxos of owners Karlie and Ed that represented KentKruzin.co.uk and the golf that just seems to get everywhere with its funky styling mixture of hydraulics and surfboards, owner Dave Phillipson used the BritishMods models to good effect, allowing them on to his surfboard to make more than the car bounce, if you get what I mean!
Elsewhere we found a sweet Honda VTEC powered Mini, Ben Bockett’s Fast Car cover Impreza, with our very own Chris’ Impreza helping to keep the car park well stanced! Outside the main area we found a nowadays rare Renault 5 GT Turbo, a nicely stanced Audi A4, a pair of retro classics in the form of Mk1 Escorts and a tidy BMW E30, who wasn’t shy of seeing how it went with a bootfull of accelerator round a roundabout.
And the roundabout is what sets the BritishMods meet out from any I have been to, to be honest we have never been to The Ace Cafe, and when Stu informed us that he had some guys prepared to, errm, give the onlookers some good value for money, we weren’t quite sure what to expect, until the epic wide arch, yellow Mk1 Escort gave us an idea, with the owner demonstrating perfect control of his awesome ride with a series of impressive donuts, and was rewarded with some cheering and applause from the crowd!
Obviously he was accompanied by a few who wanted to have a go, the owner of the grey E30 gave it a shot but a trio of clowns; 2 Saxos and a Fiesta, all with useless handbrakes kept the crowd in good spirits with their comical handbrake turns, hats off to the Lupo owner mind you, I’ve never seen one on opposite lock before!
It reminded us a lot of a really “old skool” event; nice show cars, a few clowns paired with some impressive fooling about that went on well into the night, and in our eyes the credit has to go to Stu and his team for putting on a fab event and breaking our Ace Cafe virginity, not only this… but our first cruise ever to include a goodie bag!
BritishMods have been kicking around the scene for a while now and I’m hoping that more events pop up from the guys, so if you’re from around the London area and fancy heading off to the shows and getting more involved with a club then Garage Awesome suggest you look these guys up first!
If you want to keep up to date with any future events that we’re going to be covering, or maybe you want us to cover your event, it’s simple, we’re on Facebook www.facebook.com/garageawesome or if you use Twitter follow us @GarageAwesome.
Pic Credits – Ollie Novell
