Rollhard at Bicester Heritage
As a photographer, capturing car shows in an artistic manner can often be quite the challenge. Usually cars are parked in rows, one after the other, leaving little in the way of creativity for us goons behind the lens.
However, when it comes to Rollhard at Bicester Heritage, things are a little different.
Much like Players at Goodwood, Rollhard is the only event of its kind to take place at the historic World War II site and this year, thanks to the china flu, the RH team worked with Bicester Heritage to curate a fully outdoor show, affording them as many ticket sales as possible and keeping indoor areas to a bare minimum.
This allowed them to open a new ‘technical’ area of the impressive location, offering show cars the chance to spread out in a completely random fashion amongst the various buildings, workshops and showrooms surrounding the airfield. The result? A show that, simply put, is a photographer’s dream.
From 8AM, the gates opened, and the airfield began to fill. The relative tranquillity of the site suddenly bursting into life with the rumble of flat six and V8, the latter belonging to not one but two Ford GT40’s in iconic Gulf livery. This pair weren’t the only historic racing cars in attendance with the RH team pulling out the stops to display an ex-Michael Schumacher Benetton F1 car on their stand.
I was stoked to see some cars roll in that I’ve been following on Instagram for some time and one of those was Thom’s Type-X kitted Nissan 180SX slammed on staggered Volk Racing TE37s. Thom has been working hard to restore this S13 hatch and it definitely shows.
Another stand-out was this little crème MK1 Golf owned by Isaac Odgers. It sits on Airlift Performance suspension over a set of super rare Ronal Racing Turbo magnesium split rims and under the bonnet lies an impressive, chrome plated 16v ABF on throttle bodies.
Being a complete BMW nerd, Beinn’s stunning BMW E12 in its original Amazonitgrün paint was a personal favourite. The standard of detail in this restoration is something else and I strongly encourage you to visit his Instagram page to check out the work that has gone into the engine and chassis of this thing. It sits perfectly with a pair of BBS E26s up front and BBS E50s on the rear.
Before I ramble any further, I’d like to say a huge thanks to the great guys at Rollhard for putting together a fantastic show on short notice in difficult times. This one is firmly in the calendar as a show to attend each year.
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Event: Rollhard at Bicester Heritage