Showcased Sydney Road Trip

Words: Andrew Price | Pics: Matyas Fulop & Josh Dobrik

I’d been fairly amped to attend ‘Showcased’ presented by THE-LOWDOWN for weeks until my plans fell through. Friday afternoon, sulking and dreading the thought of spending the entire weekend working on cars, I received a call from Matyas inviting me down for Showcased. It didn’t take much arm twisting for me to say YES!

Rushing home I packed my bags and camera gear and headed to meet up with Matyas and Charlie who was heading down in ‘MXB055’. The plan was to meet up with the boys from Streetkarnage, leave the Gold Coast at about 10:30pm Friday and arrive in Sydney by about 9:30am on Saturday morning. Little did we know that this wasn’t going to go to plan!

We met up with the Streetkarnage boys consisting of Zak ‘the Beard’ Denman in his slammed 7 series Beamer, Alex ’48AGN’ Huston in his bagged Mk5 Golf and Cobey in his super clean ‘OMY35’ V35 and the rest of the boys coming along for the ride.

Filled with anticipation, we hit the road (the arrival of a cop car may have sped up the process) and started the trek down to Sydney. Seeing Charlie’s MX5, Zak’s Beamer, Alex’s Golf and Cobey’s V35 in convoy was impressive to say the least and all was smooth sailing, at least to begin with.

Heading down with a group of modified cars we assumed that there could be some issues, but rolling into Grafton at about 2:30am we encountered a problem we hadn’t really anticipated. Anyone who has seen Zak’s car has seen how low it is. Ants fear for their lives when Zak’s rolling by. Unfortunately as it turns out Zak’s fuel tank fears for its life on rutted roads. Going over bumps, Matyas and I saw lots of sparks being thrown, and even wondered what was touching the bitumen. Little did we know, it was actually the fuel tank. Eventually a gash opened on the bottom corner of the fuel tank courtesy of a larger bump, sending fuel pouring onto the road and all over our faithful steed, directly behind Zak.

After about half an hour on the side of the road trying to find some solutions to the fuel leaking out from under the car we trundled down to the nearest servo, luckily only a km or so down the road. After searching the rather meagre supply of parts in the servo one of the boys came up with the brilliant idea of using soap to plug the hole. We sat around for a few minutes to see if tank had stopped leaking, then hit the road again with a sigh of relief and the back of the beamer sitting up a little higher! SK has some more coverage of the incident here.

We drove through the night changing drivers/cars and sharing stories and at about 10am the next morning the group stopped off in Newcastle running well and truly behind time to check up on Zak’s car and to give them a bit of a clean before making the final run into Sydney.

Making the run into Sydney the guys were on a mission and at 12:30 we arrived at the gates and the crew from THE-LOWDOWN quickly had the cars in their places.

We have to say, the T-LD crew did an incredible job organising the event with several trade stands and supports including Xtreme Motorsports, Meguiar’s, Zen Garage, Just Car Insurance, Monster Energy, JDMST and Disc Brakes Australia all helping to make the show a huge success. Check out T-LD’s coverage of the event here.

After a great day, wandering around, looking at cars and chatting to other enthusiasts the awards ceremony was run and won and the boys from Streetkarnage took out the ‘Cross Border’ award, perhaps largely due to Zak’s adventures in getting down to Sydney! A well deserved reward for the guys! The Queensland cars had a constant crowd of people around and received plenty of attention and positive comments from all.

After the end of a huge couple of days, with many of us being awake for 40+ hours we headed back to the apartment or for a few quiet drinks. In true SK style though we heard the next morning that many of the guys had headed out on the town for a few drinks to make the most of the Sydney night life.

Next morning after a well-deserved sleep we met a few of the guys out on the street and headed in convey across the Sydney Harbour Bridge and met Charlie and Zak at a servo just outside of the CBD. The guys had spent part of the morning fixing up Zak’s fuel tank in anticipation for the drive home and in the servo with use of a few makeshift items a bash plate was quickly made up for Zak’s car. The Beamer’s rear suspension had given up the ghost and Zak was going to be heading home again laying rail the entire way!

We hit the road and departed Sydney, doing battle with the best of Sydney’s roads and drivers and quickly made it to the freeway. With a relatively clear run ahead of us we made great progress only annoying the locals slightly while taking some rolling shots of the cars.

Shortly after we stopped for fuel a patrol car arrived at the servo, followed by a Department Transport department vehicle. It was about at this stage I was glad we trekked down in the daily and I bet a few of the guys were getting a little anxious. Fortunately no defects were handed out… at this point.

Getting late, we decided we would stop in at Kempsey for dinner, after eating pretty horrible highway food for the last couple of days we found a pub and the boys ate big while sharing stories and reviewing the past couple of day’s events! As a little bit of an outsider to the group it was fantastic how they welcomed me in and hearing their stories. The guys weren’t just loyal to one brand or one style of car modification. They were just a group of friends with the same interest, whether it was drifting, circuit, VIP they all had an appreciation for each other’s style.

Unfortunately not all was smooth sailing, and Charlie’s exhaust manifold started cracking. Luckily we could continue the drive, minus boost.

Finally we hit the road again and stopped one last time a little south of Byron and said our final goodbyes to the group as everyone parted ways. Matyas, Charlie and I headed back for home. Unfortunately at some stage we had apparently annoyed the local constabulary and Charlie was pulled over. It was quite a sight standing on the side of the road watching the Golf, Beamer and V35 all drive by as the officers watched them drive by while checking Charlie’s car out. Fortunately about 15 minutes later and after a stern don’t come back to New South Wales speech, we were on our way.

Exhausted and tired after dropping off Matyas I headed home and slumped into bed at 3:30am to give me 3 hours sleep to start the working week.. I dozed off thinking that this had been a brilliant weekend and somewhat wishing I didn’t have to be at work by 8:30am.

Finally a big shout out to Matyas and the Downshift team for inviting me along and giving me the opportunity to piece some words together for Matyas’ fantastic photos. Also thanks to the SK guys for making the effort to head south and being a great group of guys. They are what the modified car scene should be about. Finally a big thank you to T-LD for putting on a great show. Showcased is hopefully just the beginning of more events of this calibre in Australia.

We will have another story coming with some of the highlights of the actual show itself, including some of the gorgeous promo girls. You definitely don’t want to miss that. But in the meantime, check out T-LD’s coverage here!

Tags: australia, featured, jdm, jdmst, lowdown, nsw, road trip, showcaed, sydney, the-lowdown, TLD