Ashington Festival “2 Fast 2 Furious” 09 – report

The Ashington show sits nicely in terms of timing and location between other local shows for the south coast, falling a couple of weeks after Worthing American, Rod & Custom.

The car show forms part of the main Ashington Festival and so any attendees need to be mindful of the road being closed for the carnival between 1pm – 2.30pm. Last year both William & I weren’t able to get down there until after the carnival had been through, so had missed some of what the festival had to offer and could only claim a spot for our rides near to the car show entrance.

This year no other commitments were made for the morning of the festival. A reserved Friday night would ensure a clear head on Saturday morning, then we could dust off our rides, meet up, cruise down at our leisure and sort ourselves a nice spot to relax in the promised sunny weather – or so we had planned!

The plan started off well. Friday night came and went with restraint! Saturday morning came with a clear head and following a suitable breakfast and mug of tea I set about removing the car cover and wiping the Torino over.

Happy that all was going to plan I moved the Torino out onto the drive and threw in a few bits and pieces for the day ahead – then it came, the phone call to scupper our best laid plans.

William had followed a similar routine that morning, but on moving the Camaro found that he had a new unwanted feature in his engine bay. A fountain of petrol squirting up from the fuel line, high enough to catch the light and then falling down to nestle around electrical connections and hot exhaust headers!

Pop quiz what do you do? – you have a leaking fuel line that must be fixed before the car can be driven but only enough time to make the journey with a stop for fuel and cash before the road is closed – what do you do?Ashington 2009

Rather than shoot the hostage in the leg we decided to make a fast repair to the fuel line (fortunately new spare pipe in the garage) and use some of that American Muscle to make the journey somewhat swifter than originally planned.

As we arrived it was clear to see the turnout was massive, arguably the best ever and there was a brief look of exasperation from Alan and the stewards as they were trying to work out where they could put us – something they had to do for several arrivals before and after us.

But being the right side of the road closure, time was less pressing and with a little maneuvering we all found a spot with William and myself in the lower corner amongst a GT40 & Camaro and good company with it.

Similarly to Worthing, it was not just the number of cars at Ashington that made the show great, but also the fact that so many hadn’t been there the year before. There was also a good atmosphere with some familiar faces making the whole occasion even more enjoyable.
Lambo-pug!
As the 2 Fast 2 Furious name suggests there was an attendance of modern machinery, where the focus was on the stereos ability to produce sound rather than performance or sound from the engine. There was a Peugeot 206cc which whilst not my personal choice had to be admired for the dedication and level of work that had gone into it with Lambo doors, airbrush work – I don’t think there was an original part on it!

One of the most memorable and amusing parts towards the end of the afternoon was a Mk2 Golf that was lowered and restrained in looks, just a bright set of rims and finished in white. It did however have the mother of all stereos that resulted in the car having vibrating wipers (they were jumping at least 1-2” off the screen) and windows and doors that were pushed away from the body (when closed) whenever the bass was wound up!
Good Vibrations!
There was also an Astra van that was nothing special, just a set of alloys you might think, probably delivering something. How wrong you would be it was like a set of speakers on wheels! There wasn’t a single area of space inside that hadn’t been used for mounting a speaker, suffice to say it would have taken some time to count them all. The party trick of this van was to make girls hair frizz up that were sitting inside it and boyfriends shirt quiver (who was leaning in to keep an eye on things) purely through the power of sound! One things for sure, there can’t be any filler in those rides – with that bass it would have been vibrated out a long time ago!

Whilst amusing they don’t do anything for me and more worryingly I almost found myself moaning about how loud they were – how frightening is that?

If I’m honest I can’t tell you about the rest of the festival because I spent all of my time amongst the rides in the car show or talking to new friends. Whilst chatting to a few others it soon became clear that a good number of us were going to the Cranleigh Classic Car Show the following day, so with a rendezvous arranged and mobile numbers stored we made our way home in anticipation of another great outing to follow.

To view the pictures of Ashington 09 “click here” to visit the gallery.