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AJA's and Andyvec's Irmscher drop off
What a road trip!
Andy turned up at my house in his gleaming Signum -
We set off at 2.30 pm with Andy's words still going around in my head - 'What are we doing?'
We were soon met with the curse of White Van Man. They were bleeding everywhere -
After a stop off at Mark The Cabby's house for a few brews and a chat we finally got on the ferry at just after 10pm. Our actual ferry was booked for midnight, so we were already 2 hours ahead of time.
One word of advice to all those members with lowered cars - Andy's car only just managed to get on the ferry as the ramps are very steep. When you drive onto these ferries do it very slowly! -
Not the best picture I know, but there's no way we were going to get lost with two sat nav's on the case. The Vauxhall fit Sat Nav had the basic major routes on it which was reasonably helpful. The Tom Tom was as good as we expected, however it was a little slow to adjust. A couple of times we took the wrong turn before it had corrected itself. So anyone going over and using a Tom Tom as there directional device just be aware that it isn't as good as it is in the UK -
We also found the perfect car for Ian_C -
It even had a Turbo badge on the back for him -
We decided to follow the Tom Tom rigedly and see what route it took us. It took us through France, Belgium, Luxembourg and then onto Germany, which to be honest was quite a scenic route. In hindsight it would of been better to specify a particular route and spend more time on the German Autobahns as you just eat up the miles on these as you'd expect. We had really **** weather early on so Andy decided he wanted me to drive (the sneaky bu$$er), so I couldn't really open the car up on the autobahn. The weather cleared slightly so Andy decided to see what the car could do. There was plenty left in the car and he managed a very respectable 130mph which considering the conditions was very brave of him -
We arrived at the factory at a little after 10am. They were expecting us at midday, so we managed to keep our two hour advantage we made for ourselves in the UK. The road leading to the entrance to the Irmscher factory looks like this -
A few pics of Andy's car outside the main entrance to Irmscher Germany -
I saw these wheels and immediately thought of Green Growler, I can't think why! -
This pic obviously needs a bit of research. I'm not sure what the Irmscher RC line is but I intend to find out -
After Andy had talked money and what he wanted Irmscher to do for him, we were given the keys to the one and only IS3. Gunther had just returned from the Geneva motorshow and kindly allowed us to have a look around his actual car. By the way the alloys are his winter wheels -
We were then given a comprehensive tour of the factory. This included all the Design and development areas (some top secret cars and machinery), and actual production lines, and the warehouse. Both myself and Andy never expected to be treated like we were; they couldn't do enough for us. We were shown things that most people would not be privvy to; especially the Top Secret Development areas where they receive cars from manufacturers to work on before their launch dates. They currently have loads of Peugeot cars in for upgrades, which surprised me to say the least. They're currectly releasing Imscher Upgrades for the 107, 207 and 407 SW and to be honest they looked the business. The highlight of the tour for me was to get up close and personal to Gunther's very own Signum i35 Kompressor. This is a 3.2 V6 Signum with a 20k euros turbo conversion that kicked out over 300bhp. I tried to get a discount for all our 3.2 drivers on here but I was told that the project was being shelved as they thought the costs were too high. The car is destined for the Irmscher museum (yes I did ask if it was for sale) -
I predict the new 'common' alloys will be the 20" i500 wheel. They were everywhere, and I mean everywhere -
A few pics for the Irmscher Museum -
For anyone else wishing to have authentic work carried out by Irmscher, the train station is directly across the road from the Factory and the train takes you straight to the Airport. It couldn't be easier -
We arrived at the airport 5 hours (yes I did say 5 hours) early. This was the longest 5 hours of my life -
If I was asked for advice for the guys and gals going to the Irmscher Trip I would say make sure you stick together on the drive over. There's plenty of places where you could get seperated from the others. If it was me I wouldn't try and have one big convoy of cars, I would have three of four seperate convoys each with it's own responsibility of getting to the factory. There's going to be members who want to open their cars up on the autobahns and others that don't; you could easily loose other members. If you don't have a sat nav unit, please don't simply rely on following a member who has one. Do your research properly as if you were going over on your own.
There you have it folks, AJA's and Andyvec's 31 hour trip to the Irmscher Factory with no sleep in aid of our members (oh, and to drop off Andy's car).
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Originally Posted by chrisgettings
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