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International Tuning Salon 2004 in Mechelen Belgium
We set off to Dover about five pm on Friday making our way onto the M25 from the M11 after me being xrayed at the hospital in Bishops Stortford (long story I won’t go into it), all was going well till we hit the M25, Britain’s worst road especially on a Friday night.
The traffic was awful we crawled all the way round till we got to the Dartford tunnel which took us about two and a half hours, giving us about an hour to get to Dover ... total mare, I think I smoked about 60 cigarettes with frustration, thankfully I wasn’t driving otherwise anything could have happened.
As soon as we got over the tunnel the traffic was much better, which was handy as we had hardly enough time to get to Dover. Eventually after a lengthy drive down the M20 we finally made it to the ferry and we had literally five minutes to spare before the ferry was due to leave, we were the last car on the ferry and they closed the doors as soon as we had parked up, but at least we was on the ferry and on our way to Calais.
When we got into Calais it was my time turn to drive, having never driven on the wrong side of the road before and having very limited directions from the boys at Fast Car I was a little anxious. In fact the directions were so limited we got lost straight away, so I was concentrating on driving on the wrong side of the road late at night, tired trying to find somewhere to pull over and ask directions. Finally we managed to find a BP garage and I went in, everyone in the station rushed outside to gawp at the car, I think they thought it was a spaceship they hadn’t seen anything like it before lol
After getting directions and getting onto the right road we were soon cruising along the E40 the LENGTHY road which would take us from Calais towards Brussels, the direction we were travelling. Now I don’t know if any of you have driven on this road but it was long very clear and very late at night , so after taking it easy for a little while and I was used to being on the wrong side of the road I decided to open her up a little, after all we did see speed signs for 130 of course that was mph ... Wasn’t it ? so hitting 165mph wasn’t really a big issue it was only 35mph over the limit, surely not too bad ? (obviously the picture of my speedo at 160mph was taken whilst on the dyno it would far too dangerous to try and do that on a road)
Anyway after a long long drive we finally reached our final destination which was Maccy D’s in Mechelen (the meet up points are always the same in different countries lol), where we rang our buddies from Fast Car, Rickay and Tonay who swiftly came to meet us to take us to the hotel, they pulled up in style with a nice handbrake turn which was quickly aborted after seeing a gold Skyline closely behind, the drunk locals were loving it, so we gave them a nice bit of drift action as we pulled out of the junction. We soon pulled up to the hotel and booked in, we were very shocked when the hotel was actually REALLY nice .. bear in mind the show promoter paid for our ferry, petrol and hotel, so was expecting to be shoved in a run down crap hotel.
After about three hours sleep we were woken by a chirpy faced Tonay from Fast Car who we went down for breakfast with before making our to the show. Tonay jumped in the Liner and clearly loved it, we were just at the junction before turning into the exhibition centre, when would you believe it a police car pulled up right next to us ... That police car was a SMART car, has to be the funniest thing I have seen in a while, a Skyline against a police SMART car, now that would have been a picture I would have love to have got, I looked over to the police driver .. smiled ... he looked back at me and gave me a grimace smile in return, I think he knew the score, and didn’t wanna race me off the line, it was like something you see in the movies, we all had a good chuckle about it.
We pulled up to the show next to where some water hoses were as obviously having travelled about 300 miles the Liner was a little dusty ... ok it was covered in mud. There was a fair few other English cars there too including two Evo’s we had to queue to use the hose, I finally managed to grab a hose and about five minutes later the show organiser told me we have to get you in mate as we need to close the door, so had to quickly wash off as much mud as I could before driving in.
After getting in the show we managed to eventually get the car on the stand with the Abbey Motorsport lot, took a little negotiation though as space was tight. As soon as it was on I started the long laborious job of polishing up the Skyline which took a good few hours, it was shiny and clean and I stood back to admire all my hard work when the guys from Abbey Motorsport decided to fire up the Skyline R32 on the Dyno to test it out, unfortunately my car was right behind it and as soon as they revved it up, my car was covered in oil, this did not please me at all I can tell you lol so I moved the liner in front of the Dyno.
The show opened on that Saturday but there wasn’t as many people as I thought there would be, but the next day proved me wrong it was HUMMING with people, you could hardly move. I had a www.djrickduncan.co.uk sticker made up to replace the cruisefarts one I had on before, definitely looks much better.
The guys at Abbey Motor sport (not all of them worked for them some were customers like Ged and Tim who now owns the Japanese Top Secret R33 along with a few othe liners including the green nur spec one in the pictures) done a few Dyno’s to the delight of all the spectators at the show, one of them had some decks and was mixing it up and nicely let me have a go, though I didn’t take any of my tunes :o(
We cruised back to Calais with two of the guys off the stand as they needed to be back on Monday too, it must have been a site to see though, there was an R32, R33 and R34 all in a row. We had some fun taking pictures of the other two Skylines ... but god knows how we managed to not be hit by any of the mad continental drivers, at one point I had four cars cutting me up, as I tried to avoid one the other tried to cut me up, was a fantastic piece of driving if I do say so myself lol
This show has to have been my show of the year without a doubt, so very well organised and very busy and we were well looked after, big thanks to International Tuning Salon organisers and a big big thanks to Ricky and Tony at Fast Car for being such a good laugh and arranging everything for us respect to you guys !!!
Show report and pictures by Mr Skyline
Gallery From International Tuning Salon 2004 in Mechelen Belgium >>>
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