Its been brought to our attention that some people are still hitting this page, instead of our newly designed, fresher site which we now self host!

So if you can see this, you not in the right place, try refreshing or clearing your Cache/Temp internet files failing that, we hoping the internet will sort itself out!

Ollie & Team
www.garageawesome.com

The venue and event we decided to head to was Santa Pod and the first “Drift What Ya Brung” day of the year. Santa Pod and the DWYB team have been a major player in the grass-roots level of UK drifting, providing both weekday and weekend sessions throughout the year for all drifters from the first time novice right through to the stars of the British Drift Championship and JDM Allstars events.

The format is so simple; it’s easy to see why it’s so popular, with this weekend alone attracting 50+ vehicles. Santa Pod and the DWYB team turn the hard Tarmac-ed area usually full of show cars, trade stands and pit crews from the Pro drag racing circuit into a maze of cones, fences and barriers to create a drifting paradise for all skill levels.

The whole site is divided into various “pens” starting with your first step into the drifting world, a cone in the middle of a square for you to get in some donut practice! Moving on from that there is a figure-of-eight, then a double figure-of-eight and at the top end of the area there is a small “Kidney” track of a similar size and layout to the Drift Taxi’s you see gracing the big shows such as The Fast Show and Ultimate Street Car.

Finally, and definitely the most impressive, is the “Big Track” a huge layout towards the top end of the site, taken from the EDC layout in 08, allowing not just the usual one at a time drifting, but for 4 or 5 cars to head out together, with some amazing speed and some brilliant skill on display, with drivers linking together sequences of corners, often in a train and always giving the onlookers the feeling of “if someone cocks up…”

The cost of the day is £60, which is nothing to be given pretty much a free reign to skid about from 9.30 right through until 5.30, killing as many tyres as you want to, and Santa Pod even accommodate for that, with Mint Tyres on hand to buy part worn tyres, a full changing facility and for a small fee, will professionally remove the tyres you have well and truly killed!

Never before has such a wide range of cars been seen in one place all doing the same thing, from rattle canned E30 BMWs, BWM compacts, Escort Cosworths to MX-5s, the legendary Corolla AE86, a mental left hand drive Honda S2000 Turbo, Nissan Cefiros and Skylines and more 200SX/Silvias than you can count, and as an owner of such a car, that defiantly ticks the right boxes for me!

The cars are certainly driven hard; a prime example would be that of the owner of the silver Silvia you see in the pictures. He spoke to us saying “I think I’ve cracked the head… we had only been there 10 mins”, that said, we left around 4, and the car was still charging round, just occasionally coming back to the pit area to refill his radiator with water!

It has to be said that drifting appears to be one of the friendliest forms of motorsport around, there’s a great community spirit, we felt like we could ask anyone anything, they all like having their photo taken and when the inevitable happens and a car breaks or you have an off, the community will help you get going again!

Just as we were about to leave for the trip home, what should turn up? only a Race Shuttle containing Sumo Power’s Re-Worked and Re liveried S15! So we bailed back out of the car, grabbed the camera and managed to get a few snaps of the car before leaving, and what a stunning machine they have made look forward to seeing it in action at some point this year!

All in all an Awesome start to 2011, something we will be going to again I’m sure, and a big thanks to the staff at Santa Pod and the marshalls who keep this event running despite it being bitterly cold in the morning! If you want to get into drifting, or love watching or have an interest in motorsport photography then head to the Santa Pod or DWYB websites for all the essential information and booking details!

Pic Credits – Ollie Novell

We have compiled 90% of the calendar of events for us to visit throughout 2011, but we are still hanging on for a couple of the competitive race series to release their final dates and venues.
Those who followed us through the back end of 2010 will remember that Time Attack is a strong favourite of ours and was the top of our list to try to cover each and every bit of action in 2011.

Now we have the dates and locations of the increased 7 rounds of the Championship, including a double header at Kent’s Brands Hatch Indy Circuit. The finale remains at Snetterton, but takes in their new 2011 track the “200″ and new on the calendar for the competitors is a trip out into Wales as Anglesey makes its début appearance on the Time Attack hit list!
The other rounds are made up from last year’s favourites including an opener at Oulton park, a trip north to Scotland and Knockhill and the crowd favourite; Cadwell Park.

No news on the “Modified Live” supporting show as yet, although I’d be very surprised to find it not running following the success of last year’s Kleers backed events.
In the meantime we are going to bring you any extra team news, and hopefully get out there and feature some of the cars prior to them hitting the circuit.

Whip out your diaries, and make sure these dates are in it and click on www.TimeAttack.co.uk for more information

Now to call it a review of 2010 is a little ambitious, since the Garage Awesome project was only dreamt up in mid July, so it’s more a review of our action throughout the past 5 months, in it we have included all the things we have been up to, some you might have missed and all with pictures that have not previously been on Garage Awesome, so for those who have read every last word and viewed all our pictures, there is something new for you lot too!

Our Project began by hitting the JDM Allstars event at out local track; Donnington Park and following it up with a second drifting event just a week later as we took in round 4 of The British Drift Championship, immediately confirming Garage Awesome’s interest in the art of sideways! The first static show we hit was the Jap Show held at the picturesque Thoresby Hall, and even allowed myself and Chris to show our own vehicles!

Feature cars were something we wanted to include and when Karl & Jay’s Volvo 340 appeared just days before heading around Europe we grabbed the opportunity with both hands and sent Coop out to take some snaps! Our second feature car came in the form of the fabulous Ford Fiesta ST of Matt Slinn, still one of our most popular posts and some nice shots despite us still very much learning the ropes.

August saw us head off to Cadwell Park to do what we do best; take pictures of moving race cars and in this particular instance it was round 4 of the Time Attack championship covering both Pro/Club Pro and Club classes.

Accompanying the Time Attack we managed to fight the crowds to take some pictures of the European Drift Championship and whilst the track action broke for lunch, I took the opportunity to take in the Kleers Show and Shine paddock and the club stands to find some of the best polished vehicles to blog about!

Continuing into August we had managed to develop the Garage Awesome logo as you see it now, and we had started to get some good hits and were receiving some nice feedback. Next thing to hit our pages in August was a massive two part special on one of the biggest modified car festivals in the world; USC at Santa Pod, incorporating Show and Shine, Run What Ya Brung and some of the action from the ESC drag series, oh and not to mention Santa Pod’s very own Fireforce Jet demo car!

Coop then headed off to Mallory Park where he managed to take some amazing quality pictures of the British Rallycross championship and managed to fill us in with all the action from this amazing form of motorsport!

Our first cruise also popped up in August, with cruising a staple part of any car enthusiast’s lifestyle, we certainly didn’t want to ignore it, and for our first covered event we ran a convoy down to Derby and took in the action from Streetrace’s After USC cruise.

With a slight gap in our action, I spent a few days planning and writing an article based on the UK scene’s obsession with importing cars over from Japan, which was well received, although most of the credit has to go to the owners of the stunning EP3 Civic Type R and DC5 Integra Type R; Rich Smith and Sallyanne Braddock, whose immaculate cars were shot despite a miserable day and having to send Coop way out of his comfort zone, and up in a forklift!

Our third feature car linked us nicely to the previous article, with local Skyline owner Ben Morton bringing us his sweet R33 GTS-T, again on a rainy day, to run a nice little feature on.

Next on the Garage Awesome agenda was a trip to Hull, not for the last time in 2010 either, our first call was to the annual Hull Motor Show, always a nice day out, accompanied by some great weather and a wide variety of clubs and cars from all over the North East of the UK.

One of the favourite events on the Garage Awesome calendar is that yearly visit to Silverstone circuit for Trax, a massive event that took up two parts in a similar vein to the USC report back in August. With track action and the masses of club cars to fill the memory cards, selecting the photos to use is always the toughest of jobs!

Whilst at Trax, the guys from our first covered event, the JDM Allstars, did their final battle of the year and we managed to get some great shots as they gracefully, and not so gracefully, drifted their way around the complex.

A bit of an annual tradition is for myself and Hayley, my other half, to go to the world’s biggest VW camper show in the Malvern hills for Vanfest! We love it here; we love campers, so I fought off the rest of the Garage Awesome team to bring you coverage from the 5 or so fields ram packed with classic and modern VW Campers.

News became an important part of Garage Awesome’s work, and we received some great information regarding the future of the Donny Show, and will hopefully bring you more on that when we can!

Without a doubt, our very personal favourite event that has happened in 2010 was the Britcar 24hr race, some amazing photos, amazing atmosphere and one of those things you just have to experience as a petrolhead, it really didn’t disappoint and it is the first event on our calendar for 2011!

Back on the Time Attack trail we headed off to Norfolk circuit; Snetterton to again cover the popular Modified Live action, with all the Time Attack classes covered and the final season’s results brought to you too! Kleers again ran their Show and Shine event and a good walk around the club stands provided us with enough material to cover both the on and off track action.

Then onto what I still believe was the biggest cruise ever done in the UK and Hull where Rich and Dean at Fast-N-Modded invited us over to cover their charity based “Hulloween” cruise, tough light conditions and over 1200 cars made it a very busy night, but with over a £1000 raised and a great night had by all we were so glad and fortunate to have been invited along to cover it!

Just a week later saw Chris and I trek to the capital city to another event, this time Stuart and his team at BritishMods invited us along to cover their night at the Ace café. Again, the light conditions were tricky, but we’re learning all the time and with a good bacon and egg sarnie inside us we covered the event with great success and enjoyed our trip down to the Ace!

Sadly, just a week later we found out the news of, and there is no other way to describe it but, the “Modifiers Bible”, Max Power was to end in the early part of 2011.

Whilst all this was going off, Coop had put his wellies and thermals on and was stood deep in the Welsh forest to capture the action from the 2010 GB leg of the WRC, with the best drivers in the world piloting these types of cars for the last time down the Welsh mountains, it made for some fab photography!

Following the demise of Max Power and the close of the show season, we rolled the clock back 5 years and dug out some old photos I had taken in 2005 and wrote an article on the changes within the scene, but it’s the cars that stole the show, with many bringing back fond, and sometimes terrible, memories in almost all who read it!

In the final part of 2010 the weather dominated the headlines, and it was the same with the events that we managed to attend, Coop again being the first to encounter the snow on the Roger Albert Clark Rally, which was quite an adventure!

With a gap in the weather, we went all Retro and brought you feature car number 4 in the shape of Chris Antcliffe’s Metro Clubman, another car that caused a bit of a stir upon its publish, with people suddenly realising that a Metro can become cool, and since then we have had a few others sent to us, so it might not be the last time Garage Awesome sees a Metro grace the blog!

With the snow back the final year’s activity was hosted by Nicola and the team from Kroozin North West and their Xmas cruise, a snowy trip up to Salford made for a fun packed and very entertaining evening indeed!

So, phew, that’s 5 months of Garage Awesome, an amazing launch 5 months and without a doubt a springboard to launch us all guns blazing into the 2011 calendar. It has been amazing and what started out as a small side project has turned into something the 3 of us take a great deal of pride in, and are constantly firing texts, emails and phone calls across to each other with fresh ideas and plans for 2011 so please keep tuned to Garage Awesome.

Also it wouldn’t have been as possible without the support from the people we have met and worked with, so a few “thank you”s; firstly the backbone of the scene; the clubs, especially Rich & Dean at Fast N modded, Stuart and Marie at Britishmods, Nicola and her team at Kroozin North West, Becca & team at UKCarCruises, Lofty and the gang at UK Modified Ridez and the teams at Maxxd, Streetrace and Kent Kruzin.

People already well established within this tough industry have also helped us out and we look forward to working with you all in the future, so thanks to Ben at LowLifeUK, Jason & Pippa at Auto-media, Donna & Jo at Santa Pod, the Donnington Park, Mallory and Silverstone Staff, Rob and Andy at Time Attack/Modified Live/Kleers, Kimi from JDM Allstars and all the guys at the BDC.

I’m sure we have missed some but you know who you all are so thank you and we’re so looking forward to a full year of Garage Awesome Coverage!

Happy.New.Year.

Pic Credits – Ollie Novell & Rich Cooper

So whilst everyone is in a festive mood, from the 3 of us here we would like to take the opportunity to wish you all a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, and we thought we would use all our creative skills on making a cheesy christmas card for you all!

OK, so it doesn’t feature the scene you would normally see on a christmas card, but one we have adapted from our coverage of the Roger Albert Clark rally we did earlier this month

So thank you for supporting Garage Awesome and have a fabulous xmas day and festive break

Ollie. Rich. & Chris.

Christmas cruises are pretty common in the UK scene, with 3 or 4 being drawn to our attention over the last few weeks, but the inclement weather had put pay to us visiting some in Kent and Wales, however when we learned that Nicola and her team over at KNW were planning one, we drew up plans to battle the weather come rain or shine (or even snow!) to bring you coverage from their event!

It seems we were far from alone, with convoys running from all over as far away as Milton Keynes, Stoke on Trent, Birmingham and our friends over at Fast ‘N’ Modded running one from the east coast, Hull! The 75 mile journey we made wasn’t quite as simple, as our route took in some of the highest roads in the Peak District, some that in weather that this country is currently seeing remain closed for large periods of time.

It was worth the trip though as the Kroozin North West team had been busy promoting on the forums and that was represented in the turnout. The location, just a stones throw away from Manchester’s Trafford Centre, was ideal with plenty of space and lighting and with the cruiser’s favourite; a McDonald’s on site.

Convoys steadily arrived from about 8pm and filled up 2 of the main car parks pretty quickly but a third car park was left, and we’re not sure if this was planned, but it didn’t take long for people to realise this, and along with the few inches of snow and ice and the -7*C temperature in Salford, meant that an improvised snow drift arena was formed.

A variety of BMWs, Evos, Subarus and 200SXs, an MX5, an Audi S3 and an S4 Avant all came out to play and put on a display that BBC’s Dancing on Ice would be proud of, and as usual the few close calls that did happen were met with cheers and “ooooohs” from the on-looking cruisers, definitely a great way of making use of this weather to keep people entertained!

Kroozin North West have been organising cruises for a good few years, and the experience Nicola and her team shone through, with an organised, trouble free location, a mass of convoys from all over the UK and their forum full of information, it certainly has the Garage Awesome seal of approval when it comes to putting on a top class event.

Aside from the “snow drifting”, lots of cars caught our eye on some of our various walks round, although unfortunately the trip in the salty, slushy roads had put pay to the cleanliness of some cars, the quality shone through. The black and cream themed Bora was tidy, the blue S14 proved it can look good and is used hard and the Morris Minor looked and sounded like something Mad Max would own!

Elsewhere we found a couple of tidy Mk2 Golfs, a spotless Astra VXR, a Honda Integra and some Renault Clios, a drift-ready purple S13 and a neatly airbrushed Vauxhall Corsa.

As the night drew to a close, the -7*C temperatures meant an early night for some, but it just goes to show that no matter what the weather, an event in the UK can work and run and still make for an enjoyable evening. Big thanks again to Nicola and the team at Kroozin North West and we suggest that you log on to their forums to keep abreast of the next event these guys plan, and with any luck, Garage Awesome will be there to cover it!

Pic Credits – Ollie Novell

And it’s eBay where the story of Chris Antcliffe’s Metro begins, now before I go any further, I know what you’re thinking… ‘Metro?’ Yup, I had the same quizzical look when I announced that we were off to shoot this car from both Chris and our often sceptical photographer; Coop, however, we made the trip to Newark to try to convince them both I’d not totally lost the plot!

Chris came across this rarely seen Metro whilst browsing through eBay, he saw the car, loved the colour, popped in his bid and a few hours later became the latest name on the logbook of this 1989 Metro.

However, the 20 years of life so far had taken its toll on the bodywork of the car, fortunately though, Chris is a dab hand with cars and especially bodywork, so he got stuck into replacing the ageing and rotten panels including both of the front wings and the driver’s door and re-sprayed them in the standard factory colour; Solar Yellow, all on his own back garden, top work Chris!

With the car structurally sorted, Chris turned his attention to making the car stand out, well, stand out more than a bright yellow Metro already does! He found a set of 12″ Revolution alloys, and finished them in gloss black, which we think suit the car perfectly. Wheels are the most important choice on any project and the Revolutions just work on this car, keeping that retro style but also slotting in with the modern trends that are occurring within the scene today!

Following the 2010 scene flavour, Chris got busy with the stickers too, with some cool and cheeky slogans scattered across both front and rear windows, “Scrapage Scheme Survivor” and “Rust is lighter than Carbon Fibre” being a couple of our favourites!

The exterior was almost sorted, but a bored 5 minutes at work saw Chris looking at the Metro and deciding it wasn’t sitting low enough, so out came the spanners. “I’ve no idea how much lower it is” says Chris when we asked him at the shoot, and that’s down to the Metro having funky Hyrdagas suspension, meaning all Chris did was let some of the pressure out of the shocks until he was happy with the height, and that’s that, one lowered Metro!

Having owned the Metro just over a year now, it’s fair to say Chris has made some real key changes to the appearance of the car, and ones that work well, but Chris spends most of his time inside the car so it would be a shame to leave that standard, and Chris agreed, throwing away the “granny” spec front seats and replacing them with a set of Recaro reclining seats straight out of a car of a similar vintage, the Ford Escort RS Turbo.

A Sparco harness keeps him held tight to the seat whilst battling with the funky multi-coloured steering wheel on those tricky B-road blasts. Under the bonnet you will find a 1275cc lump that powers the Metro, although talking to Chris the word “Turbo” was mentioned, so maybe an engine swap and upgrade is on the cards for the future?

As for the future, it may not be the last time we see Chris and his cars on here, he is hoping to take it to a few shows in 2011, and amazingly is also finding time to build a Hillman Imp too that may well appear on here once completed, not the usual garage line-up for a 19 year old!

So, there we have it, not your run of the mill feature car, but by the time we left our shoot location, everyone was convinced that Chris had definitely created something cool and different, something every modifier is striving to do, and speaking of location, Garage Awesome would like to thank AW Accident Repair Centre in Newark for allowing us to use their yard and even their paint oven for the shoot, thanks guys!

Finally, as this shoot goes live, it’s the owner, Chris’ birthday, so happy birthday Chris from us all here and a reminder to you all during this off season period; if you have a car that you would like a shoot done for, or think might be worthy of seeing on the pages of Garage Awesome, then please contact us and the best way is through our Facebook page, after all a slightly dark, mobile upload was what lead us to featuring this fine yellow, retro, Metro!

Pic Credits – Rich Cooper

Now the information we have is a little sketchy at this moment in time although more has been released today, with more to follow next week, but it seems that plans are well underway for US based stance, wheel fitment, offset and style gurus; Hellaflush, to bring their highly popular brand of unique shows and events over to good old Blighty!

In a statement released on their Twitter page (@Hellaflush) it advised us to “clear our calendars” as the guys over at Hellaflush are preparing the flyer for their maiden UK event on the 24th July 2011!



If you’re not sure what Hellaflush is all about, where have you been? It’s a site dedicated to showcasing the coolest and most radical & perfect wheel fitment on a wide range of cars, anything with stance and wheels fitting “Hellaflush” is featured on their site, it really is worth a look. Follow the link on our blogroll to the left of this post and check it out for yourselves!

The location for the event is the site once used for Donny South and last year’s Players Show, a large expanse of tarmac and airfield on North Weald Airfield, just off the M11 in Essex. As they’re in the early stages of planning we’re not entirely sure on the format of the event, but if the events over the pond in the US are anything to go by, expect some of the finest, highest quality cars in the UK in attendance. Of course Garage Awesome will bring you full coverage from the event, and in the mean time any further news we can bring to you, we will do!

In the meantime, click >here< for the official announcement page from Hellaflush

Fortunately, here at Garage Awesome, we strive to get to everything to get the best coverage we can so you guys can keep up to date with all goings on and even more fortunate than that we have Coop, who we can send anywhere in any weather and instruct him not to return until he has some coverage of said event!

The event in question that ran over the weekend was the Roger Albert Clark Rally, or more commonly known as the RAC Rally, held over stages in Yorkshire, Scotland and Cumbria over 4 days, and provided us with a perfect opportunity to capture some great rallying action!

The cars involved were all in the classic section, with a line-up of cars that would slot straight in on the stages of a rally in the early 80s making for that something a little bit special and nostalgic, and also a great opportunity for us to see cars in action that would have been competing at top level before we were even a glint in our Mum’s eye!

So, maybe you were one of those not affected by the weather, but for most of us over the last week, we have all been buried under many inches of snow, with the North East and Yorkshire getting it first and worst, and the with the beginning of the Rally set at the showground in Pickering, it was always going to be tricky for both competitors, marshals and spectators!

Sure enough the snow fell, and it fell hard, I’m sure a quick scan through the photos will show just how deep and heavy the snow came and settled, and those following us on Twitter (@garageawesome) or Facebook (facebook.com/garageawesome) will see various pics of our own cars stuck, and the beautiful scenery that we awoke to in our frozen cars on the Saturday morning!

As for the rally, I think we were very lucky that it ran at all, with Friday night losing a few stages, and Saturday morning the same, it is a testament to the course marshals and safety staff that worked tirelessly to keep stages open and help the stranded cars that lined the stages, both those of the spectators and competitors!

Some of the casualties of the snow were Nick Elliot’s Escort, Rob Smiths Chevette and Herve Guignard’s Porsche 911 who went off in SS13 and SS20 respectively. Other retirements to note were the flamboyant Renault 5 Turbo of Paul Chieusse and Will Onions’ Mk2 Escort

Friday’s 4 stages saw stage wins for Leigh Armstrong, Darren Moon, David Stokes and Stefaan Stouf. Saturday saw Warren Philliskirk, Will Onions, Andrew Haddon and Nick Elliot take wins but it was Stouf and co-driver Joris Erad in their Escort RS1600 that took more than anyone else despite a hard fight from veteran rally star and former British Rally Champion Gwyndaff Evans.

Despite stage winners swapping positions throughout both Sunday and Monday, and with the cancellation of Stage 19, it left them all too much to do to catch Stouf and Erad’s Escort, who at the end of the 22nd stage on Monday late afternoon, were crowned rally winners, with Evans in the runners up spot followed by Haddon, Griffiths, Collins, Moon and another former British Rally Champion; Mark Higgins.

Interesting to note that 11 of the top 12 cars were all Escorts, only the pairing of Phil Colins and the late Colin McRae’s co-driver Nicky Grist spoilt the Ford party with a 5th place finish in their Opel Ascona 400.

So, an interesting weekend for rallying, and an amazing amount of snow to go with it, leading to a long one for our intrepid photographer, so have a flick through some amazing pictures of some real classic rally cars, and amazing Yorkshire and North East Forests, framed in the glorious white stuff!

Pic Credits – Rich Cooper

So, that’s where we’re going, cast your minds back to 2005, what were you doing back then? I’m aware some of you were still at school, a good few years away from even thinking about driving, and on the other hand some of you will recall 30th and 40th birthdays, but neither matter, there will be something here for everyone and hopefully we can pose some interesting points, make some of you remember some amazing cars and for a lot of you, see some creations that you have never seen before!

Obviously we’re going to need pictorial evidence of 2005, and as you may have realised by now, we don’t pinch or borrow bits and bobs from other web sources here, everything you see on Garage Awesome is 100% Garage Awesome; if it’s on here then we write about it, from scratch and we take the pictures, that’s how we like it!

So would going back to 2005 be a big problem for us…? Err turns out ‘no’, because unfortunately or fortunately depending on how you look at it, even back then I was the world’s biggest modified car geek and a quick raid of my harddrive turned up folders full of hundreds of photos I’ve taken, all filed by year and event, enabling us to bring you pictures from the actual shows in 2005 from my very own (point and shoot) camera.

I think the shows themselves are a good place to start, back in 2005 there wasn’t a show almost every weekend like there is now, Modified Live hadn’t even been thought about! Donny Show was the traditional season opener, the Easter weekend usually saw the modified masses head to Doncaster Racecourse where the best of the best of the winter projects would make their debut appearance in the modified circles, camping was limited, show stands had a cap of 5, 6 or maybe 10 cars maximum and Auto Glym had introduced the Best in Britain competition.

Donny Show also ran another show later in the year; the aptly named ‘Donny South’ took place on North Weald Airfield in Essex and gave the same opportunities to those in the South that the original Donny gave to those in the North. In between ran Modified Nationals, who in 2005 had moved the show from Billing Aquadrome to Newark Showground, prior to Billing it ran at Shakespeare County Raceway, and following Newark saw it go to Rockingham Raceway before settling in for the last 4 years at Peterborough Showground.

The event here in 2010 that I wish had kept going was the infamous Max Power Live and most importantly the Max Power Live - Top 100, a full-on 4 days of pre-screened awesome cars and the live action arena, but unfortunately 2006 saw the last Max Power Live at The NEC, and with the announcement of Max Power’s end in 2011, the show looks like it will be just a treasured memory.

USC, which is still in its original guise, was notoriously the big one of the year with huge fields full of campers, massive parties, lots of track action and seemingly always mega-hot weather to go with it! Add in Trax at Silverstone, which itself developed from a Ford only affair and that pretty much summed up the main shows that made up the 2005 season. It just goes to show how many events have been created since based on the popularity of the scene back then, and the diverse nature of what people were doing!

So, what were people doing? Well to summarise, I would say putting the biggest wheels and bodykits on any small hatchback going, but in truth there was a lot more going on than that. Let’s admit it, 19″s on a Saxo, Corsa, Punto, Fiesta is no easy task even now, especially with an approved ride height, but people were doing it. Wheel size wasn’t about ET and how much stretch you can have and how flush it fits, it was about an 18/19″ wheel with whatever tyre size was the cheapest and most common fitting on whichever particular hatchback you had decided to modify!

As people upped their game and 20″s popped up on a handful of Corsas, the bodykits were also in for a big change; to start, people made wild kits for these core group of cars, huge intakes, loosely based on Jap style were king. Massive spoilers delicately poised on the edge of the hatchback, vents cut wherever they could, teamed up with thick, speed hump scraping skirts, neons and door poppers would be the only thing that would cut it.

This pushed people further, realising that the kit they had bought for their car had been done, so bought parts designed for other cars and began chopping them up, and I know all about this as my very own car had a 106 front bumper, Saxo rear, 106 GTI arches, Escort RST vents and a 206 brakelight assembly! This lead to all the major bodyshops at the time such as Autovision, xXx, Myhneer, Xquisite and Kingdom constanly breaking the mould and pushing the boundaries of what can be done to a small hatch! seems unfortunate that all bar Xquisite have closed their doors.

Headlight conversions were 2005′s ‘big thing’, even from the pics you can see a variety of cars all wearing faces from other models, often not even from the same manufacturer, The Nissan Primera fronted Fiesta and 306 fronted Clio stand out for me from within the galleries.

Rear lights were dominated by one style, I’m pretty sure most of you will have had a run-in with Lexus lights, and in 2005 unless you had swapped the back lights for a set from a car that didn’t have Lexus lights available or you had purchased a set of LED bus rear lights, then your car wore Lexus style lights!

Paint was another key ingredient in these show cars, again the bodyshops wouldn’t rest, using expensive paint and techniques such as Chromaflair, glitter, flip, pearlescent, heat changing, 2 tone, you name it, expertly applied at a cost of ££££’s to the owners, which often changed as they tried to keep up with the latest colours and looks.

You will notice I’ve failed to mention drifting, that’s because in 2005 hardly anyone knew about it, the hardcore were out messing about, but the ‘drifting phenomenon’ just didn’t exist, bar a man named Terry Grant who got a little sideways at shows, Brett Castle’s S14 was on display inside at Donny as he was sponsored by Auto Glym and a trio of guys in 300ZXs calling themselves ‘Steer from the Rear’ were the only mainstream links to the then underground drift world.

So with a good insight into the 2005 season, what conclusions can Garage Awesome draw in regards to the 2010 season? Firstly, it has to be the amount of shows flooding onto the market, surely this is watering down the numbers and quality as people spread themselves thinner and concentrate on shows closer to home, whereas before, if you didn’t travel, you didn’t get recognised! So maybe a 2011 cull of the weaker, less busy shows, maybe hit a few less yourself, head abroad or try a make/model/country specific event?

Are bodykits back? Have they ever gone away? In all honesty, and we have seen this tried to be answered elsewhere, who knows?! On one side of it, the cost and innovation got so high that to make a show stopper, people gave up and went for the simple mods that have grabbed headlines in 2010 such as sticker bombing, stance, neon colours, vinyl wraps etc. The other side is that they haven’t gone anywhere, it’s just left the good ones. A prime example of this is easy to find, if you look through the pics you will see Nick Brown’s white Honda Civic EK Coupe which, minus the Lambo doors, is on the cover of this month’s Performance Jap Car Magazine, and picked up a couple of awards this year too – clearly a car that has matured rather than aged!

Could we see cars like this back en mass? I think not, but it goes to show how far the UK scene can push itself, and that the only thing holding people back are the other people and the media, we all need to stop worrying about what’s ‘in’ or ‘what so and so are doing’ and dig out our inventive brains to make the UK scene thrive again, it makes me wonder if in another 5 years time I’ll be wheeling out this year’s pictures and explaining what a fad sticker-bombing, stance and drifting were…?

Pic Credits – Ollie Novell (Circa 2005!)