Ultrace 2024

It’s pretty obvious by now that we like to attend the odd European event here at Auto Finesse. Already this year our 2024 European Tour has taken us to Croatia for XS CarNight and Germany twice, first for Tuning World Bodensee and then for Camber To Hell – and we’re not even half way through the season yet! But with all these awesome events completed, you’d think that a trip all the way across the continent to Poland wouldn’t be high on our priorities list. But you’d be wrong. The fact of the matter is that Ultrace takes place at the enormous Wroclaw Champions League Stadium in Poland. And Ultrace is easily one of our favourite shows. It’s a long road trip for sure, but it’s one that we relish – and we’ve been doing it every year since the first event way back in 2014.

It's not only that though, we always like to lay on an extra-special effort for this amazing show. And this year that involved shipping out a whole car transporter, a couple of vans packed to the gills with the world’s best detailing products and our T2 Bus Pop-up Store… oh yes, and an entire 3-car drift team! But, don’t worry, we’ll get to that.

What’s most important is that Ultrace is one of the world’s best tuning events, a combination of live motorsport action and a static show featuring a whole host of invite-only cars that are the finest that Europe has to offer. Of course, we we’re going to be there, a couple of thousand miles round trip is an insignificant price to pay, right?

But even the journey from our AFHQ in the UK, all the setting up of our stand and sending our professional detailers out to help a whole host of other cars look their best wasn’t enough for TeamAF. No, we also had a couple of other surprises up our sleeves, including putting our 1954 Chevy Pickup on display… and the unveiling of a whole new build.

Like we said, an extra-special effort was made for this one…

Anyone familiar with the show formerly known as Raceism, knows that drifting is a huge part of the event, not to mention one of the main attractions. They’ll also know that some utterly bonkers cars turn up to battle it out on their makeshift circuit in the grounds of this massive stadium. Just have a look at the pictures and you’ll see what we mean.

But, when we said we like to show our support with something special for Ultrace we meant it. Last year at Ultrace 2023 we unveiled our freshly built SR20-powered Datsun GX1200 drift car, so what better show to roll out the new look for our retro racer for this season? And of course, we also had our Archie ‘The Crazy Drift Kid’ Harmer out in his AF sponsored CDK Tuning BMW, which was also sporting a whole new look.

Perhaps the biggest one of all though for this year though, was the world debut of our LTO-kitted, 2JZ-powered E36 drifter, a car that had been transformed from a battered beater to full on show-racecar in less than a month before the show. And while you may think that this one’s a bit pretty to be destroying rubber out on the track, you could be right… but that doesn’t mean that we didn’t!

You can check out the full story and see much more of this build in our article: AF LTO Drift BMW Debuts At Ultrace.

There’s no doubt that you’ll see some of the most amazing cars from around the world at Ultrace. This is one almighty invite-only line-up that you won’t see anywhere else. And, what’s more, only the absolute cream of the crop make the final list. What with each being vetted by the organisers in advance, you’d think that it would be a reasonably small event in terms of what you’ll find on display. But no, there’s over 1300 of them!

And of course, we’d like to show you them all, but it really is one of those shows you have to experience… and even then you may not get to see everything on offer. So, with that in mind, here’s just a small selection of our stand-out favourites, as you can see there’s quite the variety here in Poland.

In fact, with so many bona fide jawdroppers on display it took most of the weekend to get round them all. What many don’t realise though, is that all the cars – including our Chevy which was perfectly prepped and sitting pride of place on the podium – are judged by the organisers for a place in their prestigious Top 16. The short story is that, after picking up a trophy at Germany's biggest event, Tuning World Bodensee, a few weeks ago, we wasn’t expecting another win for our 1954 Pickup – but Project Stepside went and scooped one of the most prestigious trophies in the business anyway. We’re not only proud to bring the Ultrace Top 16 trophy back home to AF HQ here in the UK, but we see it all as something of a testament to the team who put this one together and keep it maintained event after event.

You can check out the full story, and get a closer look at this epic build, in our article: AF Chevy Brings Home The Silverware From Ultrace.

And we think you’ll agree, that was a full-on weekender and a half! As we may have mentioned we’re big fans of Ultrace and, once again, this year was better than ever. They seem to up the game every single time.

So, thanks to the guys at Ultrace for the invite, cheers for the trophy and loads of drift time, and most of all, thanks to everyone who attended and cheered on our drift cars and popped by the stand for a few detailing products. We’ll see you all again next year for sure.

Keep an eye on the official Ultrace Website for announcements on the next event and be sure to check out the Behind The Scenes Section Of Our Blog for more top show reports, and for everything else going on in the world of Auto Finesse.