The photo on the right was taken by a Friend of mine known as Cemesis,  I have shown just a small section of the picture so that it loads much quicker onto your screen, however, If you click on the picture you will see one of the best photographs taken throughout the whole day at Santa Pod,  Cem Managed to take a handful of photo's at various angles then painstakingly joined them all together to give a complete Panoramic view of the whole Showground, It was taken very early in the morning before all the crowds arrived.

PV2002 - The Performance Vauxhall Show

Sponsored By Vauxhall and Organised By Total Vauxhall Magazine, This event has been dubbed as THE Vauxhall Show of the year by many people in the Know. 

    Held at Santa Pod Raceway in Milton Keynes on Sunday 23rd June 2002, and with an amazing amount of luck it turned out to be one of the sunniest days of the year so far (rain had been forecast throughout the day), not only did this benefit the 1,000's of owners who were proudly showing off there cars on the varied stands,  it also was a blessing  for the masses of spectators that had travelled from all over England to make the show one of the best I had attended so far, But MOST of all, the glorious sunshine meant that the World Famous Quarter mile Racetrack was open for non-stop action all day long.

    I booked my Astra in with my Vauxhall Club, MIG Performance Vauxhalls, and after picking my friend up on Sunday Morning at 4.40 am (to the displeasure of his neighbour's due to my rather deep and extremely loud throaty exhaust) we headed for the M1 to begin our 340 Mile round trip.

    We arrived at the pod just after the gates opened at 7.00am, we were told to arrive early because the Dragstrip race tickets for the Standing Quarter Mile were sold on a first come first served basis (4 runs for £11), there were already hundreds of cars in the arena, and the queue we were in outside was quite large and I was getting a little agitated to say the least, I was really looking forward to racing my car up the dragstrip and so  everything else was pushed to the back of my mind, Luckily when we got inside the grounds the ticket office had not yet opened, 

    To give the members of the public (who were allowed into the grounds from 9.00am) a chance to race their cars up the strip, the ticket office was set to open at 9.30am, this gave me a chance to give my car a quick wash and wax before the show started and also to meet a few old friends plus a few fresh faces from the MIG Club, (though, because I was still worked up about not been able to get the strip tickets, I don't think I gave off the greatest of first impressions-Sorry guys if this was the case).

    I started to queue for the strip tickets at about 9.00am, the queue was already very big and it  took over an hour for me to get them, the waiting was made worse by my hay fever which was starting to kick in with full effect. Though the good part of the queuing was the fact that it was directly next to the public car park, and honest to god, I have never seen so many Vauxhall cars in my life, They were rolling in 10 a penny constantly throughout the hour I was stood there, from the totally standard to the maddest of cars that should have been on the show stands themselves.

    I was intending to leave my Astra on show at the MIG stand throughout most of the day like I did at the Doncaster Show earlier in the year, It was great to meet so many people at Doncaster who were genuinely interested in my car and the work that I had put into it, I had once again taken all my large laminated photos of the Astra that I had taken throughout the year as it was been built ready to show people the transformation it had undergone in my back yard.  I had only planned to set aside 1 hour for me to take the car up the Dragstrip, unfortunately, my plan of action was quickly destroyed, I had heard that some MIG members had  already taken there cars to the other side of the stadium where the dragstrip was taking place, and because there was a little friendly competition within the club, I decided to go and join them in the thick of the action.

   The trouble was, once I was on the race side of the fence, the bug had possessed me and I never returned my car once to the  MIG Stand throughout the rest of the day until it was almost time to go home, and though I did venture over on foot a few times to catch up on the gossip I now feel a little naughty about the whole incident.

    I like to think the story was the same for most of the other members on the MIG stand too, the thing that's so good about the MIG Club is that although most of the guys and gals like to keep their motors as clean as possible, we also keep our Vauxhalls as cars, what I'm trying to say is, a few of the show cars I saw have had so much money spent on them that the owners are frightened to ever take them out on a public road again for fear that they should get either mucky wet or damaged, they are pure show cars that arrive on trailers and leave on trailers and as beautiful as they may be, I consider them to be expensive items of metal that can no longer be tagged as a true car.

    There are also people who like to spend fortunes on engine conversions but don't care to use them as is intended, I guess it's each to there own, but personally, if I was spending obscene amounts of money on fitting a turbo engine or Throttle Bodies to my car, I would be on the dragstrip constantly all day long, there must have been over 200 Cars with the Turbo Engine shoehorned into their engine bay and I would guess that only about 10 went up the strip to see what they were capable off. Mig is different, it has it's fair share of show only cars, but the Majority were at the strip for the quarter mile action.  One guy who stood out from the rest was Gaz in his Carlton (masses of respect for this guy), this car is far from Showroom condition, and had much less power than a lot of the other cars that were racing, yet he still travelled almost 700 mile's to be at PV2002 with MIG, and he was not afraid to take his car up the dragstrip, running in the 18 seconds sector, he was not ashamed at all to be running his car up the strip against much faster machinery in front of hundreds of people, He had two of his four strip tickets stolen from inside his car while he was helping the guy in front push his car forward, this wasn't enough to dissuade him, he ran off to the ticket office and purchased another set at full price, gave a couple away to his friends (top man or what) then did his most famous run of the day, 1st gear all the way up the strip, topping the speed scales at a whopping 30 miles per hour, and proudly doing the queens wave to all the crown throughout the 40 second journey. What a guy.

    Anyway, I guess you're getting a little bored of reading and would much rather be viewing the picture gallery, I forgot to turn the image size down on my camera and so only managed to take 120 pictures, all cars and no dragstrip action, so I called on a few guys from mig who also contributed to many of the pictures in the later pages.

   I have rubbed out quite a few of the cars Registration plates for the owners discretion, If you do see your car in this or any other gallery section within this site, and the Registration plate is still visible to your displeasure, then please e-mail me and I will remove it immediately.

Please Click on the text.....    I'd Sure Like To View These Pictures Mate.