One of the best websites for checking out shows and happenings of a european nature, is the www.cleaned.be website.
They incorporate event galleries as well as forums into their site and are well known for having a fantastic selection of European cars. Though a lot are more modern there’ s a healthy mix of older steel in there too.
VW Golf
As they domain name suggests, they’re Belgium based website but the forum is open to all and there’s coverage from shows across Europe including the UK.
VW Jetta
You can see the stark difference between modifying on the Euro scene and our scene. Whether that’s down to the legalities of getting your ride hard slammed or just the difference in tastes and regularities between the areas, it’s hard to know.
VW Kombi
VW Karmann Ghia
As the title of their website would indicate, it’s generally a sway towards those cars with a less cluttered look, shaved bits and bobs… you know, very.. european… As you can see from the small amount of photos I’ve provided on this post (you’ll note they’re all from a VW Retro show, hence why they’re all of VW’s.), their scene is alive and well and very well catered for and to.
It’s a shame the NZ car scene in general isn’t really quite as large. No doubt down to having no real cars of our own and thereby relying in the early days on the British, Australian & American contributions. Which is were most of our local classic car scene lies. At least that which gets a decent amount of representation. It’s only really been in recent times the Japanese and to a lesser extent the European cars have been given a similar level of appreciation over here as others.
I would suggest taking a good look around their galleries and forums, it would be good to see the “cleaned” look more popular in NZ, not the over the top painted interior replications of the American Import or Low-rider scene which seems to be more prevalent in our society. Though at the end of the day, each to their own. I just know which I prefer.
-Michael
