It was the 20th annual GTI International event and with it being the 30th anniversary of the Golf we had high hopes for the show.

We punched the postcode into the Tom Tom and set off, unfortunately Tom Tom took us to the wrong place not a great start but that's Tom Tom for you! We asked a few locals and that got us back on track however could do with some better sign posting on the way in. We arrived at the venue and it was £17.00 to get in and some queuing but eventually parked after being guided in by the marshals.

The weather was the biggest problem this year, however despite difficulties posed by the adverse weather on Friday night and Saturday morning people continued to make the most of the event. Sunday was the best day with glorious sunshine it gave the enthusiasts some time to get polishing ready for the Show N Shine!

The vibe was good and everyone was friendly and with a huge display area you had plenty to see. The Show N Shine section was large with lots of very nice cars, loads of club stands, and also sprint and tyre testing areas. Everything was well laid out with traders running along the length of the display areas made for some good viewing.

Now to one of the bad points of the weekend. How can anyone charge £8.00 for a cold burger with uncooked onions and two cans of coke that's daylight robbery. o.k that's it back to the good parts of the weekend…...

Show 'n' Shine

The Show ‘n’ Shine saw a spectacular array of show cars from all over the UK and Europe. Over 100 cars were on display on Saturday and over 200 on Sunday with plenty of room to move around and look at the cars.

Show N Shine results

Sprint

The sprint area was difficult to see due to the layout and location you couldn't really see anything unless you were at the right end. However saying that it was popular with the petrol heads with more than 200 cars signed on and a total of over 1,000 runs over the weekend. Grant Parker's amazing 600 bhp quattro turbo-engined Mk 1 Golf recorded fastest time of the weekend with a quarter-mile time of 10.325 and a 0-60 time of just 2.47 seconds.

Tyre testing

The 100 metre x 40 metre tyre-testing slalom course allowed drivers to explore the handling of their cars. Cars were electronically timed around the slalom course while using their original tyres and then stopped to change wheels & tyres before running again to measure the improvement in performance.

One of the stars of the show was the appearance of the amazing GTI W12-650 which has been built by Volkswagen in Germany it was hardcore. We would love to see that on the strip when it's finished. It would probably be doing some Tyre testing of it's own trying to get any traction from the huge BHP it's putting down.

The other notable cars of the weekend were some very nice Audi TT's, Mk1/2 Golfs and a Mk2 GTI with Porchse silver rose d90's very nice combination. The car that stood out as being a bit different was a stripped out Vento r32 which had some nice modification and something we'd not seen before.

It was a success for the 20th GTI International event even with the bad weather conditions (and extortionate burger prices). It was the combination of a great venue, good organisation and friendly atmosphere that made it a hit with us. It will definitely be on the calendar for next year and lets hope for sun all weekend in 2008.