Nonsuch’s Perfect German Contrast

Published November 17th, 2016

Word and Photography by Michal Fidowicz

Over the course of the year we shot multiple car features, with the intentions of releasing them during the period of time where show season goes into hibernation. Well the time of year has come, and everyone is starting to tuck their cars in for winter to tinker with their suspension set ups and to build new wheels.

With this said, allow us to take you back to mid-July, where we met Adam and Connor.

We were always aware that Adam lived vaguely in our area. I remember seeing his car at the local Tesco car park earlier on during the year, and immediately trying to find him on Instagram. You don’t often see show quality cars in our area, especially not wrapped in such an eye catching colour. Back then the car was on a different wheel set up than it is now, and was just freshly wrapped for the 2016 show season. Just like we did, Adam started a car page on Instagram, whereas our and his page are run slightly differently, we soon ended up chatting in DMs exchanging details of each other’s work. It didn’t take long for us to decide that a photoshoot of his car needed to take place. With that in mind, we got caught up in everyday life and a few months went past. During this time Adam went through numerous wheel set ups, with each set being completely different to the one prior; be it a different colour, brand, shape or size, no two wheels were the same.  Between then and Players Classic, it seemed as though Adam went through more sets of wheels than there were events in the yearly show calendar. With that said, I can’t think of a better way to keep us on our feet and it’s fair to say we were keen to see what Adam could come up with for Players Classic. Players Classic was the next time we saw the car in the flesh since that wintery Tesco car park, and parked up along with the rest of Adam’s lot the car looked grand. The whole stand was getting attention throughout the show. So we finally got to see the car we were going to shoot for the website, right? Nope, a week or so later Adam dropped us the message: “Got some new bits going on the car soon, let’s organise something for when they’re sorted.”

Rather excited knowing we were going to be the first people to shoot Adam’s new set up, we waited patiently. He informed us that the fitment might not be 100% on point as it’ll take some tweaking and time to get it all sitting flawlessly, but that didn’t stop us from wanting to get some shots of it. We settled on shooting in Nonsuch Park, one of the bigger parks in the area with some nice backdrops, and crossed our fingers for good weather.  Sonny just about managed to come along for the shoot too, as he flew off to Africa on some charity zebra feeding expedition the following day.

As luck would have it, the weather was perfect. Sonny and I waited a couple of minutes and Adam rolled in afterwards with Rhys riding shotgun. We said our hellos and cracked on with getting the shoot done. At the time Adam was still recovering from an accident in which he damaged his leg, so Rhys was maneuvering the car about for the shots.

I always saw OZ Futuras as a stylish and classy wheel, and whilst you don’t often see polished faces, Adam pulled it out of the bag. It’s a perfect combination to compliment the bold lines of the matte wrap, whilst not being too in your face like some other wheel styles can be when paired with polished faces.

We moved up further along the path as I wanted to explore one of the parts next to the main park building. Being one of the busier parts of the park there was a fair amount of people walking by, enjoying their day. Whilst most of them were elderly and dog walkers, they’re the ones who have the best reaction to seeing such a car. Let’s not forget that outside of our niche community of people pursuing the perfect fitment, and even car enthusiast in general, a car sitting like Adam’s one makes no sense to someone.

It’s a great sight, and no matter how long I’ll be involved with low cars I will never get bored of passers-by scratching their heads only to then look at us and ask “how did you get over those speed bumps?” There was a moment where a group of older ladies actually walked past the front of the car, totally oblivious to us standing a few meters away, and tapped the front splitter with her walking stick. Like, a full on tap, even the word hit might be applicable here. In that moment I only had my phone in my hand, so the photo went straight onto Instagram. The picture can be found over on Adam’s page. Understandably, the photo blew up. After checking the splitter and making sure it wasn’t damaged, we managed to laugh it off and continue with the shoot.

It was at this moment where a black Ford Fiesta, rather hesitantly, started to approach us from down the path. It was quite literally jumping over the speed bumps. It pulled up parallel to Adam’s Polo and a bearded man, wearing a fetching FedEx uniform got out greeting Adam and Rhys. I quickly gathered that this must have been Connor. Whereas people who have been following the website for a while know of Connor very well, all I knew about him at the time was his 190E which seemed to be missing. Funnily enough before I met Connor a friend of mine told me they saw his car in a local car park. Being nosey, I decided to take a detour past the car park whilst I was out and about. To my disappointment I was too and late didn’t see the car, and on the way out I hit a curb I also didn’t see. Bending my left wishbone and making my car un-drivable. An expensive day, but a funny story I won’t forget.

It turned out Connor didn’t stay with us in the Fiesta for long, and rushed home to grab the Benz and join in with the shoot. He completed the leaving ritual of dumping the clutch on his way out, which left a very angry group of mothers sitting on the grass not far away attempting to take a photo of his number plate. I don’t know what high tech phones they had, but it must have had a very advanced camera to be able to pick up a number plate from over 80 meters away. They came up to us and immediately told us how extremely dangerous it was to do burnouts in a park, and asked us if we knew who Connor was. Adam swiftly replied by saying “We don’t know him. He tried to sell us weed.”

Seeing as we wanted to get Connor’s 190E in the shot, we waited for him to get back and moved back up the path where there was room for two cars. The light landed beautifully through the trees, and I continued to snap away. I never saw Nonsuch Park as a photoshoot location before I picked up photographing cars, but whilst looking through the lens it all seemed to tie in together.

Whereas the two cars are from two different times in history and are built for two totally different markets, you cannot deny that they look amazing parked up next to each other. The two of them aired out in Nonsuch were a perfect German contrast. One built to motorise the masses, the other built to motorise a certain few.  Both massively different to how they came out from the factory, however still retaining the build quality and refinement you expect from a German car. No matter whether the car is 5 years old or 25 years old.

Whilst I could have packed this feature with endless specs and numbers, I’d like to think the cars speak for themselves aesthetically better than I could put into words and numbers. The great thing about this car thing is that everyone is friendly and everyone loves talking about their interests. For anyone who wants more information on these two cars or simply wants to see more, I highly recommend checking out Connor and Adam on Instagram. All links will be at the bottom of the article. Whilst Adam may have taken it easy on the car shows after we shot our article, I’m sure we’ll be seeing him around next show season. I know for a fact we’ll definitely be seeing more of Connor’s 190E on this website, and I very much look forward to seeing the wheels hes building at the moment as well as that Nandos we have planned after we shoot the new setup.

Follow Adam on Instagram by clicking here

Follow Connor on Instagram by clicking here 

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hi connor