I was invited by a mate of mine, Kos from London, to show the car on their E30 Club stand. On the day there were a couple of unexpected extra guests so Kos and I put the Sharks in the Show’n’Shine Arena.

Well not a lot to show for a day at the Pod – 10 pics. By the Show’n’Shine it was busy from the moment I opened the bonnet with punters interested in the classics. Eventually got round to looking around myself later in the day. The big E65 760 won the Best of Show apparently due to the level of detailing. Mine’s got a way to go to catch up with that, but then again I never built it specifically for Concours.

There are a couple of interesting E30’s here. The red one had an S85 V10 installed – now that’s tight! The black one has a twin turbo small block 5.7L Chevy – WTF!!!! Insane or what?

Saw some reactions from other Dutch owners on a couple of FB pages that they wanted to go with me next year. don’t know yet if that’s going to work as they’ve moved it to June so it might clash with Bimmerfest (Arnhem, NL) or my usual holiday dates.

There are more photo’s to be found on FB taken by Kos under his alter-ego C-Unit: Santa Pod 2015

Another invite from the E30 guys. This time to the Grote E30.be meeting at Sint Niklaas in Belgium. A nice little drive for me, just over an hour across the border to our southern neighbours. Just went for the crack to be honest and on driving onto the town square I was directed to one side where all the non E30’s were standing. Opening the hood generated the usual interest and then I was asked if I’d take part in the concours. I got a form thrust into my hand with the request to put the top half, filled in with the car’s details, on the windscreen and the bottom half should be filled in with my choice in each category. I managed to get away to look around the other cars and dutifully filled in the form and handed it in. Went back to the car and continued talking with interested folks and never thought any more about it until somebody came over to tell me that I’d won a prize, “Best Non E30”. The presentation took place in front of the town hall and I was really pleased to accept one of the nicest trophies I’d seen for years. Much better than the usual silver plastic cups it’s a little piece of auto art, various engine parts tack welded together on a solid wooden base. Best part is that the choice was made by your peers and not the usual team of judges who generally choose the car with the most money thrown at it – and usually not even done by the owner himself.

Some of the E30 guys I know invited me to the E30 Summer Meet at Gemert, The Netherlands on 22-23 August 2015. I think there’s a bit of a click because they’re mostly modders like me. I don’t hold quite the same views as the typical restorers who tend to be traditional E24 owners. But anyway I decided to go and packed the tent and a bottle of Raki brought back from Greece with a few shot glasses and hit the road for the east of the country. Didn’t actually take a lot of photo’s but shot a little bit of video too which was edited into this:

Sunday the 6th of July saw us at Classic Park Festivals BMW Tradition meeting in Boxtel. Arriving fairly early I was parked near the front of the parking area and as it was again good weather I, of course, opened the hood. I was immediately approached by one of the organisers to ask if I would like to participate in the Concours d’Elegance they were holding. I told him that I didn’t usually take part because a true Concours is only really interested in total originality and even good restorations can lose points compared to an original car with a little ‘patina’. He told me they weren’t planning to go to those extremes and managed to talk me into it. There were some quite nice cars there and the following slide show should show what I mean.

After spending some time talking about the car with some old and some new faces I managed to get away and look round the museum which they also have there. Most cars are actually for sale so I don’t think it truly qualifies as a museum, but still a great place to look round.

Later in the afternoon they called everybody together for the Concours prize giving. Nobody was more surprised than me to be called forward as the 3rd prize winner. The chief judge commented before mentioning my name that although not strictly a typical Concours vehicle they were impressed from the minute I arrived with the attention to detail of the work done on the car and my meticulous polishing to get it looking in tip-top condition. The prize? A box of chocolate cars :-). The winner? The red Z1. Unfortunately no Photo’s of the presentation.

Bimmerfest 2014 was held, as the previous year, at the Trafficport in Venlo. Weather was good but to be honest the announced “6 Gathering” at the centre of the paddock was a disappointment. There were very few e24’s, certainly a lot less than last year. The space reserved was slowly eaten away by the arrival of loads of newer models and the general atmosphere was nothing like the Sharknose Meeting from the previous week. Nothing really wrong with it, just a different sort of visitor. As such the photo’s are a bit limited. I did see a couple of nice e31 coupe’s, the proposed successor to the e24, and an e24 custom pick-up. I still don’t know what to make of that. Don’t know whether I’ll be going next year.

Photo’s taken during a visit to the Sharknose Meeting in Arnhem on 24th May 2014. The meeting was much better than the previous year with a large contingent of excellent e24’s (Old 6 Series), many of the owners had travelled from Germany. My car was parked in front of the Schmiedmann BMW stand to help promote the parts available for the model, it looks almost black under the indoor lighting.

The slideshow below gives a fair impression of the quality of the cars attending. There were a number of e30 models which are not strictly speaking shark nose but still nice to see some of the custom work done. The e28 painted like a riveted airplane was also amusing.