One of the many cars that left me scratching my head at Gatebil was this innocent enough from a distance Volkswagen Polo. The fourth generation Polo never really got a whole lot of love from enthusiasts, with the exception of the GTi variant which arrived in 2005 when the 9N was face-lifted as the 9N3. I guess there wasn’t really an appeal to tune something which is by all accounts, a small city car. That is of course until Dahlback got their hands on one …
Today, we live in a world where we demand instant results, news and gratification. No longer have we the patience or time to linger on something and truly appreciate its value. We live in a culture where it seems we are all rushing towards our death, not taking the time to savor the moment. We quickly skim over things, often missing out on the important things in life.
I’ve been hovering over this feature for a couple of days now, in-between writing and preparing the rest of our Gatebil coverage. Putting together this story has always been in the back of my mind, and I’m not really sure how to approach it. I don’t want to do it just to have it done, I want you to know this car. Ironically, whilst I’ve been changing words here and there and adjusting color tones in post processing, our friends at StanceWorks pipped us to the post with this one. Thankfully, the StanceWorks crew, like us, are here to celebrate all that is wonderful with cars and we have some more celebrating to do …
They say that if you can get the introduction nailed for a story, the rest falls neatly into place. But to be honest, I can’t come up with any further superlatives to describe Gatebil at Mantorp Park, the only non-Norwegian Gatebil event. The collective Nordic countries have raised the bar so high, that the rest of us are going to be playing catch up for quite some time. We can learn a lot from their core mentality though – build a car that makes yourself happy and the everything will follow.
It’s quite easy to become desensitized at Gatebil. There is something about every single car present that you can appreciate, but every now and then you stumble upon something that stops you in your tracks. This brilliant red LWB Quattro not only stopped me in my tracks, but when I heard the figures, I think I died for a brief period due to overexposure to sheer awesome.
Am I the only one who gets excited by that calm before the storm at an event? You know that surreal quietness which is slowly dismantled by the sound of combustion engines warming up, somewhere in the paddock. The sound of tools being dropped and used and the sight of bleary eyed mechanics, drivers and fans slowly swarming the area. It seems no matter where one travels in the world, or what the event is – they all share this exact same feeling.
One of the first cars that made an impression on me at Gatebil was this 1 Series BMW driven by Daniel “Limmet” Liimatainen and prepared by Schmiedmann, a renowned and well respected BMW tuner and parts specialist in Europe. It’s not as wild as some of the cars that attend the Gatebil events, but it’s more about how the build has been executed.
Although I’ve been lucky to experience the mayhem at Gatebil before, I somehow thought I could cope this year when I visited Mantorp Park last weekend. I was wrong. You see, Gatebil is like no other series of events that I have ever attended before, or since for the matter. There are just no rules, it’s automotive culture unleashed. It has been a long couple of days since I landed in Sweden last week, so I guess I better start this story from the very beginning …