If you made your way to the Eikon Exhibition Centre near Lisburn for DubShed, then there’s one thing for sure. You missed something.
Northern Ireland’s largest and one of its longest running motoring events, this year’s DubShed showcased over seven hundred cars, both inside and outside. With doors being open from 12-6 on Saturday and Sunday, it was pretty much impossible to see around everything.
What we did see was an incredibly high standard of display cars, as usual carefully hand-picked by the GTI NI team, still with VW Group cars at its core, but with a much broader range of cars from 911’s and RS Audi’s, to JDM legends and bonkers drift cars thanks to DriftGames and their expansive display…
Huge crowds of course turned up to the seminal motoring event, this year without access issues that have become prevalent in recent years, highlighting the event’s continued success, thanks mostly to a traffic management company and their use of different car parks which proved a wise move this year.
We have no doubt ferries and flights were also filled with DubShed fans; a credit to its deserved reputation well beyond Northern Ireland.
Of course DubShed is a great family day out, one of the highlights for 2024 surely being the Drift Taxi area, which allowed for spectator to pay for a passenger run in some decent drift cars. What is usually an amazing live action display from Banbridge Aero-modelling Club, had to be abandoned on both days due to Storm Kathleen, and the winds which she brought.
An abundance of trade stands provided plenty of car care products, stickers and garage wall décor. As well as pre-loved body parts for cars. A popular attraction indoors was the remote control drifting arena which was a mock-up of Belfast featuring Nuala with her Hula, as well as the Harland and Wolff cranes.
We spoke to Gethin and Nigel from the DubShed team after then event.
Gethin remarked, “The atmosphere was great, plenty of diversity amongst the cars on display and no complaints on layout. The Drift Taxi experience was a hit, queued all weekend, both days. Friday setup was busy and a good decision to open that up as it left Saturday morning a much more laid back affair for setup.”
DubShed has traditionally marked the start of the car show season in Northern Ireland, and as always sets the bar high. This year was no exception, and we look forward to what the organisers have in store for us in the rest of 2024.
As the doors of the Eikon Centre close for this year’s show, we have plenty more to look forward to from the DubShed team, with their other highly anticipated events such as Deutsch Collective and Eurotreffen still to come.
