North East Motorshow - Newcastle
Racecourse 3rd - 4th August 2002
The new stand fencing
Arial view of the stand
Michael Clementson - best car
Mac Sheavills with his award
Paul Woods receives his award
With too many work and outstanding club commitments, organising this
prestigious event looked in doubt. I had no option but to ask one of our North
East members if he would like to organise the show, as it would be a travesty
for the club to miss out on such a great local event. In stepped John Moore to
track down the shows promoter and ensure we had a good pitch for the members to
display their cars.
With the recent success of 15 cars at Bents Park Classic Car Show, our aim
was to go one step further with a modern and professional stand. On a
recent trip to the Metro Centre I discovered this rather neat and fancy modular
style green fencing and garden archway, perfect. I bought as much as I could fit
into a Mondeo and quickly set about putting it up in the garden to see how it
looked. It looked good in the garden where its supposed to be but I knew this
would do the trick for the show, and it did. But how do you fit it into an MR2?
- you don't.
We managed to borrow a works van thanks to my dad, and packed everything into
it including gazebo, new club banner, four directors chairs, two deck chairs,
two gas stoves, huge cooler bag ( club bar ) and two huge hanging plants nicked
from the side of the house to put in the planter box's either side of the
archway.
Now the weather had been atrocious that week and by the Friday the whole
pitch was under water. Poor John was beginning to look dejected when I met up
with him the day before to discuss the show plans. The pitch may be damp but
spirits weren't and we had lady luck on our side, by show morning the sun was
beaming and the waterlogged pitch was beginning to dry out - a bit!!
John did us proud with the pitch and we quickly set about organising the cars
and setting up the stand. We had seven members displaying their cars on the
Saturday and nine on the Sunday including Paul Woods genius LPG converted car
and Andrew Hudson's award winning pristine red coupe. Other clubs included the
MR2 Drivers Club who had two MK1's, a roadster and a caravan on their stand,
Lotus Club, PT Cruiser Club, Scimitar Club, Pre War Vintage Club and the
Landrover Club. The club scene was small with the priority of the show
given over to local dealerships. There was a brilliant stunt display by
Russell Swift driving the new Mini Cooper, what a driver.
During Sunday afternoon we held a meeting to discuss a project we are very
keen on seeing happen. I recently bought an early MK1 Coupe and decided to build
it into a track car. Whilst pondering this I decided why not build a car for
everyone to use at a track day. By the end of the meeting eight north east
members had agreed to be part owners and main contributors to the car. The car
is now being modified, tweeked and prepared for its debut at Elvington MR2 track
day on September 7th. Look out for updates on this project on the new NE TRACK DAY CAR page and
come and see its debut at Elvington Airfield.
Before we departed to reflect on a successful weekend John had three awards
to present, results are as follows.
Best Car at Show - Michael Clementson
2nd Best car - Mac Sheavills
Innovation and contribution to the club - Paul Woods
Thanks John for a well organised event.
Michael Sheavills
