Lelystad - Dutch 02 meet .

Sept 2007:

This is a collection of images that I have taken from the Dutch 02/E21 meet each month. Please remember to credit the author if you want to use the photo.

Once again the Dutch 02 annual meet was arranged at an old Speedway circuit called the Midland Race Circuit - Lelystad.

We left for The Netherlands on the Friday catching an early Dover - Calais ferry driving through France, Belgium and onto Holland.

Whilst driving I had a brain-wave, why not find a BMW specialist on route and pop in, as we were making good time. So I remembered Manderautogas.nl a quick search on Robert's PDA provided us with the address which was then fed into the Sat Nav and off we went.

Lauren Manders is a lucky man, he runs/owns a classic BMW specialist workshop and showroom in Deurne, in the workshop was a genuine M3 E30 track car, two Turbo's (one for a UK customer), and a racing E21 with fanatastic throttle bodies. The walls were lined with period steering wheels and plaques from years of attending European 02 events - including Brooklands. We were then shown the showroom, where Laurens has several round rear light 02 race cars, another Turbo, and two E12 Alpina B7's, one was stunning as near to concours as you can get in Alpina Blue with the compusory Alpina blue and green interior, with Air con, apparantly one of only two with A/C ever made. Laurens offered me a direct swap for my Turbo, but foolishly I declined. After our farewells we headed to our over night stop at the town of Utrecht and had pre-booked into the Ibis Hotel. Once parked and refreshed we headed for the old part of Utrecht, where I can throughly recommend for a weekend away. Utrecht is a lively town with many Universities and because of that trendy bars and resturants, if you head for the old canal there is every kind of resturant along the canal banks, it looked like old converted warehouses, but you had something for everyone. You could even hire a boat and cruise the canal having a BBQ party on board. Lots of bars and entertainment throughout Utrecht, it reminded me of a "clean Amsterdam" and without the p0rn industry too be honest. Next morning one hours short drive to Lelystad, where we were treated like Royality by the Dutch organisers, parked the Turbo with the other English cars and went drooling. I managed to find another brand new rare boot-tidy to add to my collection (watch this space, soon to be remade). Richard.

Once again, the Dutch 02 owners turned out in their droves to support their annual event and as usual there were all manner of cars on display, from scruffy, useable daily drivers to A1 condition paragons of originality.

My personal favourites from the day were lovely Sahara Beige German 02, with period roof rack and suitcase, some strange but very good looking alloys and twin carburettor conversion. On the inside the owner had also made some tasteful modifications with two tone seats (dark brown with Sahara centre sections), and Sahara rings on an early dash; there was also a pair of 1800 Neue Klasse’s in Verona that looked the business, one owner even taking it out on the track in some anger, and a stunningly original 2002 from Norway. Although every time I walked up and down there was another car I thought should be best, including a German Alpina, endless Touring’s, some great looking E21s (they are included at this event).

There was however disappointingly few Inka cars, which made my decision to hitch a lift with Rich in his Turbo and leave my car at home all the more galling!

As with the range of cars on display, there were also seemingly no parameters to those cars that people took out on the track for the driving disciplines (slalom courses laid out around the racetrack, still allowing a couple of tail out corners if you fancied it). As mentioned above the Neue Klasse was out sliding around, there were various smokers, and a stunning Jagermeister liveried rally car, which cleaned up on the time trials to be honest.

All in all it was a great day, the Dutch as friendly and hospitable as ever, although the food on offer let something to be desired with some form of boiled beef burger proving to not be the sort of thing to have two of!

I would heartily recommend that you make the effort to get out to the Dutch event next year; their approach to their cars and the community really encapsulates what we would like to see in the UK; lots of people in all sorts of car, regardless of condition. Every car has a story, and like all objects of affection I am sure that everyone would agree with me that any 02 is a great car and I want to see as many as people have out there. Robert Lamprell.

The return journey was frault with problems, on the Saturday afternoon my front brakes ceased, with John Hudson's kind help he spent an hour on Sunday morning dismantling them and repairing the calipers in the 02 car park (Big Thank You again John), it worked, but I still needed to take things careful. Then smoke started coming out of the car whilst driving to the pre-arranged car museum for the Sunday, which we thought was the rocker cover gasket (nope) still needs futher invesitigation and John tells me that my Turbocharger is worn out and you don't want to know what that costs (oh ok then £3400 from BMW). So after changing the rocket cover gasket again roadside repair, we decided to head home and made it this year under our own steam. I don't know, these cars certainly need a lot of attention and money thrown at them to make them reliable. So the Turbo's off the road again - argh. Keep trying to 02. Richard.