Ultimate Dubs 2019
Published March 11th, 2019
Words and Photography: Michal Fidowicz
Hold down an image to download it – alternatively see the Flickr link at the bottom of the article.
We’ve been here before haven’t we? A fairly damp car park in the middle of no where: Telford. I don’t know about you but I’m more than glad to have returned here as it’s a reminder that show season along with an exciting summer is actually around the corner and approaching fast.
This means a few things, starting with the most important one. We finally have the chance to see our friends that we might not always get to see (mainly because distance is a thing) gathered together in one place. We get to mess about with more cars and create new things; we get to go out and about and see what others have been building, and for a lot of us, we finally get to put some miles on the motors we spent the winter months building.
By now we’re all familiar with what the gig is at Ultimate Dubs. You turn up, park up your motor, go have a laugh with your mates over night and come back the next day to moan about the boring, corporate, cookie cutter air and wheel combinations scattered about inside the trade stand halls. It would be way too easy to do that, and frankly I’m too busy these days to say much more about that.
So instead, I’m going to show you some cars I actually really enjoyed this weekend. Starting off with Lewis’ Lupo thing here. I’ve had the (miss)pleasure of knowing Lewis long enough to see majority of the work that hes done on it, and I find it interesting (and worrying) how much you can actually do to a simple Lupo before turning away from it and calling it a day. Over winter he’s swapped the engine to some other under-powered VW lump and smoothed his Arosa front end to make it look more, smoothed. Also, he’s made his wheels wider and spikier.
All in all, pretty epic outcome! A clean look for the 2019 season presented in one of the better spots in the venue – well done Lewis.
While we’re here, lets crack on inside and see what caught my eye. Admittedly, I often forget what I actually took pictures of over the busy weekends so flicking through these is as big of a surprise to myself as it is to you.
The red hall was probably my favorite area in the place. Mainly because it was filled with cars that weren’t VWs but also because it has a much more relaxed atmosphere. This show was the busiest I’ve been to at the International Centre, and you could definitely tell. Therefore being surrounded by some quiet with less individuals getting in my photos was definitely nice.
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Chris’ CC probably had the prime location in the hall, and the lighting really complimented the lines of the car.
These photos are a mixture of the ones I took on Saturday and Sunday. It’s a good job that the doors were open on Saturday as it gave me a chance to run around and take as many photos as I could before the surge of attendees on Sunday – and yet I still missed out on loads of interesting cars that were lying about the place.
The Players lads brought along a nice variety of cars onto their stand, along their latest creation. My friend Matt commented that it’s taken us way too long to start modding Jaguars – there’s a lot of truth in that.
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I love seeing a nicely done Corrado. Would be cool to see this name resurrected. Someone tell VW to hire me.
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Loads of epic Dubs – great work everyone. Wish I took more photos of the Lowdown Transporters stand, very interesting to see their work up close. I’ll take a note to keep an eye out at future shows this year.
The ILB stand this year had some interesting metal too (and once again I didn’t take any pictures because I am useless at my job.) Being a big name brings a lot of expectation to have an interesting stand, and for this year the boys pulled together this wooden hut looking contraption which acted as a literal pop up store. It worked pretty well, and definitely stood out to me.
So, that just about sums up what I saw inside this year round at UD. Lets take a look at the outside, because there’s a lot to see there too!
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Tom and Josh are proof that shitty £200 motors are the best motors. It doesn’t matter how many brand new VAG cars you can cram inside the halls, they simply wont be as cool as something stupid like a 3G Civic scraping along the floor as it drives along. At least for me anyway. Seeing these things getting built on social media over winter was half the entertainment, and it’s a good example of a group of mates having a laugh, getting together and building something they like, in their own style just for the sake of it. Hats off to you boys.
Can you see what I mean when I say the cars outside are just as interesting as the ones inside? The funny thing is, these aren’t even the cars from the actual show. This is the hotel car park.
… anyway, back to the show.
These photos were taken on the Saturday. As always, Sunday came around and I returned back to the venue to be greeted by a whole other batch of cars for me to have a nosey around.
That S-Class is probably the coolest thing I’ve ever seen. I work in Central London and see these everywhere as I commute to and from my miserable job. I often catch myself day dreaming about what I would do if I had the funds to own a car of that caliber. Nice to know there’s a lunatic out there who has the means to execute something like this!
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And that’s it. A brief look into my Ultimate Dubs. Am I excited for this year? Absolutely. Thank you to everyone who came along and said hello this weekend, and thank you to those who were running my sticker/hoodies – it’s a good reminder to me that I have an audience who are somewhat interested in the photos I take and the words I have to say.
There’s plenty to do this year and Ultimate Dubs has done a good job of getting me excited to crack on.
Thanks for reading, and see you at the next show.
Click here to see the Flickr album from the event, where you can download all the photos in their full quality.
Click here to visit the Candy store
Click here to read the Ultimate Dubs coverage
