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The show season started with a bang for 2003, in the form of the Belfast Sportscar Show held at the Kings Hall. Of course, RMS had a stand (almost) organised in time for what turned out to be a massive all-weekend event.

In a joint effort with jon44w.com, we met up on the Thursday night before the show to set up our quite substantial joint site stand. Mark Luney’s stunning BMW M6 was one of our features – it was polished so well that the flyers kept slipping off the bonnet! Tim Rock provided a 360bhp weapon, namely a tuned Escort Cosworth (yes, he did let Una from Modified Motors sprawl over the bonnet), and lamper1 from the forum brought his sweet wide-arch 206. We were given a prime position beside the Modified Motors stand, and it was good to meet Justin and Darren again.

Friday afternoon arrived, doors opened, the fun began! Friday wasen’t as busy as I had anticipated, and it gave me a chance to have a good look round the rest of the exhibits at the show. Subaru had a sizable stand displaying the new Impreza STi sporting redesigned headlight clusters and huge, gaping bonnet vent. Honda had their flagships, namely Civic Type-R and S2000 standing proud as well as sneaking in the spanking new Accord Type-S, which for a family carrier looks rather tasty indeed. Charlie Hurst’s were about as expected, with Ferrari 360 and AM DB-7 among other things kept caged in a look (fantasize), but don’t touch style! TVR, RS owners, kit cars DeLorian (complete with Back to the Future replica), Minis and various other owners clubs featured in the second hall.

Of course JK Autospares’ stand couldn’t go without mention, and I’m not saying this simply because they sponsor the site (yea right Andy, I hear you all say.) Armo’s striking blue Focus was constantly surrounded by admirers whilst listening to the pumping beats of Energy 106’s Danny Dee. Their latest projects were on display – a 2.2 V-tech powered Integra, and a blue wide-arch MR2 which JKs built especially for Revs.

The end of day 1 meant bed for myself – apparently I missed out on a bash in the Europa hotel. There’s always Saturday night I kept telling myself….

I arrived the next morning to be pleasantly surprised by two further additions to the stand, namely John’s Mitsi 3000GT Twin Turbo (from Performance Car Club), and the Steer From the Rear Evo 7. This filled up the extra space we had available nicely, two fantastic cars to complete the stand. We battled through the ever increasing waves of public traffic to get to the chip van and handed out endless amounts of flyers, and with our close proximity to the Modified Motors stand, checked out the competition for the Miss Sportscar Show prize. Needless to say, a few of the girls were over at RMS for photos!

The end of a long day couldn’t come too soon. The word was spread between the RMS and modified motors stand to head to the M-Club later in the evening. The combination of VIP treatment and the mag models was too tempting to miss and we all ended up having a great night’s banter on the exclusive top floor of the M-Club.

Typically hung over, even after a monster fry, we all ambled about our stands white-faced on the Sunday. The rally kicked off along with the snow at the back of the Kings Hall which proved massively sobering for us all, due to the sub zero temperatures. The whole place was heaving – forget the Motor Show, this was shoulder-to-shoulder crowds. The day was over before we knew it, and I think a great weekend was had by all.

A cruise sparked off later that evening in Antrim, moving on to Nutts Corner which was laced in snow. I didn’t make it in to what I heard was a massive cruise!

<i>Thanks to: Eddie Milton and Pioneer Networks for inviting RMS, Gaz, Jon44w, max, Robert, modified motors, the Steer from the Rear guys (especially for the M-Club night), all the guys who gave up their time to lend us the cars for the stand…</i>

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Andy is the founding member of RMS, and when he's not following motoring events around the UK and Ireland he can be found on the track (sideways, having competed in top level drifting for a decade), or of course he'll be on the forum.