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.