| After living in the UK for three years I
was keen to get to my first car show since arriving back
in Oz to see some home grown street machines. This was the first time that I had been to Motorvation since it moved from the air-conditioned comfort of the Burswood Dome to the Quit Motorplex in Kwinana and I was hoping that it wasn't going to be too hot like I had heard past events had been. So I was well pleased to wake up on Sunday to a clear but cool day. |
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The first thing that struck me about the whole event was how relaxed it felt. I had recently been to a car (or should I say truck) show in Texas, which, apart from being darn hot, felt really up tight. The other great thing about Australian shows is that you can still participate in driving events. This is a big part of Motorvation and is about the only place these days where you gain points for doing burnouts! |
| The first thing we checked out was the Go-Whoa action down on the drag strip. The object of this event is to accelerate from a standing start and to stop on a line 200 metres away in the quickest time. Generally the hot rods have it all over the street machines due to being able to easily see where their front wheels are and a superior power to weight ratio. A clean start and non-skid stop helps the times but the best crowd kudos is gained by doing a massive burnout to the 150 metre mark followed by a sideways skid to the line. Even better if the back of the car arrives before the front. |  |
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By now the smell of the fast food vans was getting too much for us so we charged off for the obligatory grease fix and then down into the static display held in the pits area. To be honest, if Motorvation was purely a show and shine car show, I think that you would have some reason to be a bit disappointed with the quality of the cars on display. There were probably ten extremely high quality street machines on display and about another twenty or thirty that deserve a good deal of respect. However, what might have been lacking in terms of extreme street machines was more than made up for by hundreds of real street DRIVEN machines. The number of contestants (79) competing in the burnout finals is an indication that street machiners in WA would just as rather drive their cars than polish them. |
| The popularity of the Formaz Dyno Shootout and the Xplosive/Rollaboyz Sound off shows that here in the West we take our horsepower and sound systems seriously. I wonder how many cars competed in both competions? A word of advice to the organisers though, keep the fans interested by running two dynos in parallel. While one car is being hooked up the other can be doing its thing. |
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 Click on the photo to download a clip of Gary Myers in action (467Kb). |
The day concluded for us with the burnout final conducted on the Hankook Tyres Snakepit. Having witnessed first hand the burnouts at the famed Summernats I can tell you that the West Oz boys (and gals – cheers good looking blonde chick in the green Datto ute) can match it with the best of them in Australia. The highlight for me was seeing Gary Myers kook the tyres in that beautiful blown Mustang of his. The guy that they pulled out of the crowd to ride with Gary won’t forget that ride in a hurry. |
More Motorvation 2003 action! |
Take me to the official Motorvation website! |
