'08

Found a fair few old images of a shoot we did at the beginning of last year, maybe even earlier! None of the cars look like this anymore, and the white eunos and FD3S are no longer driven by any of us and have been replaced with a Fiat Coupe and another FD3S respectively.
I'll update with current images as soon as we are all free and can find somewhere half decent to shoot.
Just thought they were worth adding so you can see the evolution of the cars a little more. Anyway, on with the pics:

Emerald K3

Help for Heroes Trackday

Back in June I went down to Dorset for a hoon around a tank testing/teaching facility. Now this is serious bizniss! Proper military, proper tanks around, and as we were doing a Nurburgring-tourist-session style blat around the concrete access roads in the middle of a fake war environment, proper risk of damage to stuff like cars, and us.



My car was completely not ready, the brakes, suspension and tyres all not what I wanted, but hey. The day was put on to raise money for Help for Heroes, which is sweet as fuck and a properly good cause anyway - but raising money by blatting around a track that's never been opened up like this before? How could I say no!



It rained in the afternoon, which meant some low speed fun, but not too much! People were crashing all around and I kinda wanted to drive home myself - not sat in a cab talking to a fat, sweaty guy stuffing a Ginsters in his piehole.



So that's that. Made a sweet weekend of it by crashing at Kyle's, and going clay pigeon shooting the day before. What's better than shooting shit and driving like a twat?

Stickerz

Oh em gee. The first batch of stickers arrived!
You can like, stick them on things.

Some examples of things you might stick them on are:
Cars,
Helmets,
Dogs,
Breasts,
etc

MX5 'progress'

This pic is from last week, passenger seat rails in-progress - welded in and gone over with seam sealer. Seats are both in now, just need to find the rest of the harness. Wouldn't be fussed as I'm only missing the crotch strap, but it's got the buckle on!



Did a mock up on the MX5 to see what the Jenveys looked like. Couple of issues to get round, and waiting for parts is driving me up the fucking wall. Got nothing to do, but so much needs to be done.

Ring piece

Seems a suitable opening post - our first pilgrimage to petrolhead mecca: the Nurburgring in June 2008. Once we got over speaking no German and showing up in the rain during a massively crowded race weekend, we found that the 'Ring is like no other place on Earth.


It had taken me 5 or 6 years to make the trip, and once we were there I wished I hadn't put it off by spending money on other things, but hindsight's a bitch and all that. Stunning scenery and location, more excellent cars than any show, and probably the best 13 miles of tarmac anywhere in the world. Epic is an overused word these days, but it's a fitting adjective for the Nordschleife.


996 in the Ring carpark:

Banana:

Brokeback:

Ben's FC, my 5, Luke's Saxo, Sam's Coupe and Kyle's Corrado - getting fuel in France just before the Gendarmes showed up:

Wankel:

Spazzo:

Panzer:

Nice 964 outside the Grune Holle:

So much awesome machinery:



Being camp:




This Lotus Sunbeam is running 270bhp, I got a pax in it - sounds great and quick pedalling:


Aston DBS test car:

Nice E30 M3, one of the "Northern Monkeys" cars - we lost you guys' contact details somewhere between Nurburg and home. If you read this or know them, drop us an email on brodrive1 at gmail.com:


Nurburg Castle Tower:

Views from the top were mental. You can see the Dottinger-Hohe straight and the gantry if you squint:

Development and testing going on during the Industry sessions. This is the fantastic Aston Martin V12 Vantage, looked bloody fast:

Corvette ZR1:

We also caught the new Honda NSX. This also looked quick, sounded brilliant too, real shame they cancelled it, bunch of fags:









Not just supercars and sports saloons, we even saw a pickup truck - everything seems to get tested at the Ring:

Porsche Panamera:

To punish and enslave...


Barriers up! Wouldn't mind following this lap:

You can see my power steering belt there, dropped off at T13, luckily got caught in the undertray and fell out in the carpark:


Luke wasn't so lucky unfortunately, we had to leave the car in Germany to be scrapped:

Services on the way home:

No roof means comedians can take the handbrake off....


And queuing up to get the boat home. What an eventful trip, both good and bad. We all loved it. I went back a few weeks later, and should be there now except the car is off the road. Ben did make it though, and I'm jealous. Might have to head over in few weeks to make up for it...

Rambling by Rich
Photos by Ash >: )