Our 2016
Published December 28th, 2016
Words: Michal Fidowicz
Photography: Michal Fidowicz, Sonny Harverson & Matthew Pawley
2016, what a year it has been indeed. From unpredictable politics, to the losses of multiple global talents, to Instagram stealing snapchat’s story system and to the introduction of plastic money in the UK; 2016 has truly been like no other.
The car community has not been sleeping either: the RollHard guys put on their first major show as did SlammedUK, the Players guys celebrated their 10th year of the Players Show, SoScene released its first two issues, WCI went off its rails, and one man broke the internet by putting wonky wheels on a Lupo.
Our 2017 been fairly busy too. To start off, this year we made this website. Although for the 2017 show season we’ll be bringing you a totally refurbished look, William has done a beautiful job with this website so far whether you’re on PC or mobile, and for that I can’t thank him enough. We’ve released 3 different variants of our stickers, of which we have distributed over 100, and continued to grow our YouTube channel which has now collectively gathered over 40,000 views. Now as first years go, we couldn’t be happier and more thankful for the support you’ve show us. As fun as it is to be making the content for you guys, seeing your reactions to it is even better and completes everything.
We’ve met an incredible array of people this year and have done as much travelling as a group of 17 and 18 year olds can manage on our own. Our content has definitely improved too, so I invite you all to flick through this article and see a rough outline of what we’ve been up to in 2016.
Before I crack on with the rest of the article, I highly recommend watching our 2016 film!
If you click on the highlighted show name, it’ll take you straight to our coverage.
Now we’ve covered shows before as Candy, but this is the first one we covered for our website. First show we saw our Sticker on a show car, first show we travelled to on our own as a whole team and the first show we got a chance to see Tom’s MK3.
The first feature we did for our website and the first time I properly used my camera in the dark. Harry’s build is still progressing, and I recommend having a look on his Instagram to see what the car looks like since we did the feature.
Dubs At The Park
Now, we never actually covered the show on our website as I decided we just didn’t grab enough content from it. The show itself was a good day out, however the organisers didn’t seem to approve of our Movie of the event as it included a Seat and an Audi which “snuck” in? I’m thankful I didn’t record the fist fight we saw in the main show area too, that would have really made them dislike our video! In retrospect the video was terrible anyway, and I’ve made it private a while ago. However I did post all the photos over on our Instagram, and we did also managed to meet Bryan and the BPC Retro crew who’s page has also been growing this year.
Fourinstance: West End Dubs May meet
The First Fourinstance month we covered but not the first we attended. Also the first time we saw one of our stickers by absolute chance when Mani arrived just in front of us. Big fan of the Krispy Kreme meets especially, shame not everyone can make them.
The first real big show of the year for us, and the first time I saw Jake’s and Ben’s bugs from HR Autoworks next to each other. We were also lucky enough to meet the German guys with BMWs that I’ve been in touch with over Stance | Works who were interested in grabbing some stickers. Quite surreal to meet people from other countries who you’ve spoken to before over the internet.
Fourinstance: KK & West End Dubs June meets
Another monthly round up of the Fourinstance meets.
Nonsuch’s Perfect German Contrast
Although a feature we released later on in the year, we shot it right after Players Classic. Also the first time I met Connor and Adam. A lot more details in the article.
Without a doubt my favourite show of the year, and probably the most fun and laid back day out I’ve had during a car show day. It was also the show I finally set up my camera properly, and you should be able to tell from now on the quality of photos improved severely. Everything clicked, the location, the weather, the size of the show, the general mood. No one seemed rushed or hectic as some shows can feel and I managed to have a good half hour chat with Connor without feeling like I’m running low on time to record for the film. Also the first time we met Tom from the MK3 and Matt who owns the Cabby and the Mini from the Players Classic shot. First time I had a real good look around Gaz’s E36 and Luke’s Punto too. I think the car park was the most fun Will had with his No Fu*king Airlift Micra too (RIP 2016-2016.) Fingers crossed the 2017 show will be just as good.
Fourinstance: KK & West End Dubs July meets
Probably the busiest I’ve been at one of the KK meets, as a lot of familiar faces turned up. It was nice to have so many local people we know in one place, and was good to meet some new faces too.
FittedUK
Whilst Sonny attended the show and represented the website, we weren’t able to get a full article written up about it as school exam season meant we were stressed for time. Shame as he did manage to grab some great shots, but such is life. Roll on the 2017 show…
This show was very good, infact it’s best if you read the article to get a good understanding of what the RollHard show was all about. Also the first time we met Gaz and his brother Jack (from the Blue E36 at Gravity), who we’re working closely with at the moment to organise something interesting and exclusive for the 2017 season. But more on that later on. This was also the show we met Scott who owns the pristine E36, Luke from the Punto we mentioned previously and Landolt who came down all the way from the South of France. Another crazy example of how someone you can meet on a car forum can become a familiar face through a car show. Landolt is now running the Benz and an incredible E34 that rocks our large window sticker on the front windscreen.
This was also the show where we discovered that Matt can take some really good photos. Turns out he’s not actually that useless.
Vagroots Ace Cafe Meet
We don’t always write up an article for everything we attend, however I thought it’d be nice to chuck some photos in here.
Well, this was supposed to be a 2 part article, and I’m still going to try and chase Matt up to finish typing his article up as his photos were great too and deserve their own part. The show was a good bit of fun even though we only went for the Sunday. Was nice to put a face to the car too, as we met Connor from the EOS, Dan from the MK2, Ricky from the Twingo and Tom from the MK5, all of which grabbed themselves a sticker as we had a few spare we wanted to give out that day.
The biggest show we attended, and probably the most professional film I’ve made so far (still have a long way to go.) It was great to meet new faces like Hayden and Kemal, as well as the usual people we say hello to at shows. We broke down and got rescued by Connor on the way home too; the article is worth a read if I say so myself.
Retro Beemers LDN Meet
While show season came to an end for us here, we attended a few meets which we covered for our Instagram page. We’ve been aware of West and his lovely E30 for a long time, but we finally got a chance to meet when he invited us along to the Retro Beemers meet. The host of the meet (Rich) put on a great little get together and we’ll definitely be attending future meets in 2017.
It was around here somewhere when I met up with Tom to shoot a video feature of his freshly bagged MK5.
London Stance Meet
While the meet was fairly small I managed to meet Matt and Mike, from the E38 and the static E46, and Nevin with his static E36. The general standard of cars at Ace that day was very high.
And then one thing lead to another, and Matt was kind enough to let us use his E38 as a trial car for our large window banners. We’re hoping to see a few of them hovering around next show season!
That just about covers all the articles we’ve released this year. We do still have 3 articles lined up which we shot this year: Ken’s MK5, Luke’s Punto and our Rix Garage feature.
That just about covers all the articles we’ve released this year, and don’t forget our YouTube channel has all the films we’ve made from shows this year. We do still have 3 articles lined up which we shot this year: Ken’s MK5, Luke’s Punto and our Rix Garage feature. They will be released in 2017 in the run up to the start of show season.
To conclude, we had a lot of fun this year. Hopefully 2016 will see us expand our range of products (t shirts are on the cards and will most likely be available next show season,) and the quality of our content will continue to rise. Oh, and we may have a car coming along with us to shows next year.
We’ll see you at Ultimate Dubs…
