Airside Slide
The last few weeks have been pretty eventful. After just about two and a half years of living in Canada, I decided to make my way back to the motherland.
I left Ireland just at the very start of 2014, right at the tail end of when things were pretty bad, both for the economy and for the car scene.
I felt that things had become a little stagnant and there was a waft of misery in the air; especially in the harder hit parts of the country like Waterford.
It seemed like a good time to get away for a while and smell the roses elsewhere. If there is one thing this country has, its perseverance.
No matter what you seem to throw at us as a nation we somehow manage to push on, I had high hopes that things would start to turn around, but for now it was time to go.
I wont lie, from running this site over the years, it got me pretty down at the best of times.
Seeing cars being broke for parts left right and center, along with people from other countries poaching whatever else we had in stock… It looked like there was no light at the end of the tunnel.
Stuff was making much more money being stripped, with many of these cars never seeing the road again. We lost some good ones, but that’s life, this shit has to happen, the world keeps turning.
Others just locked their cars away and headed abroad, Many cars hidden away for years, the covers yet to be taken off.
It was doom and gloom and I decided to take a step back, head away and figure things out as I go along, what was the future of the site? Was it worth doing this anymore? There was doubts…
One thing I started to notice over the last two years was the influx of stuff from Japan. By no means will it ever be like “the good old days”, but its something. Parts are coming in, cars are coming in.
Each week the news feed would have a new car from someone I was friends with and this started to pick up steam gradually. Along with this, cars started to stay together.
The prices of 2011, where you could pick up an AE86 for about three grand, or an EK9/DC2 for two were starting to go away.
Cars have gone up in value in the country quite rapidly over the last while and its nice to see. We may not have the flow of currency we once had, but the fact the cars are more appreciated for their value again is nothing but a good thing.
Id imagine due to the fact they are starting to dry up, or the fact people are bringing money home from foreign lands means there is a spike in purchasing. Less and less of us can get the deal of the century, but it does mean that less and less cars are being stripped…
People are spending, and really going at it, there may not be as many people at it, but there is a high concentrate of people who really know what they are doing and many of the faces I thought would have dropped off are still there… Any doubts I had have been crushed.
People see that things are moving again, there is more and more incredible drift cars being built for the new season.
On the flip side, there is a shed load of incredible road cars being put together and trickling into the country. There is just much more of a buzz in the air. and its not just me bringing back some positive vibes from a far away land.
The Irish as a nation are pretty fucking stubborn, and although not everyone has the money to throw around that we used to, it doesn’t stop people from enjoying their passion for cars, no matter what it seems people somehow find a way to enjoy it here.
We need to realise that we are after creeping out of the dark times. We are by no means in the green zone but its happening. Stuff is trickling in, and since I have been home I have seen so many more cars back on the road than two or three years ago, in the last few weeks I have seen cars that would have never been around two or three years ago, Evos, skylines, silvias, these cars are being appreciated again.
I made it up to the airside meet a few weeks back and although I was told it wasn’t the greatest one that’s been held at the car park, it still made me smile as I walked around and snapped some photos of some fresh cars and fresh faces side by side with some old metal I hadn’t that was hiding away for a few years.
Its great to see people with a little more spark, people are spending and regardless of how difficult the government is trying to make enjoying this little thing we have, people are not letting it go that easy. I get very passionate about our little country and its car scene…
I’ve seen some great change in the scene from being away, for better or for worse its in a much nicer state than it was a few years ago… I’m looking forward to catching up and seeing the rest of it over the coming year.
As I’ve said numerous times, we really do not realise how good we have it here for such a little tiny rock in the Atlantic, just over four million of us and yet we have one of the richest car cultures in the world whether we realise it or not, we may not have many race tracks, or places to enjoy what we do but it has never stopped us from making shit happen.
This was just another Saturday night meet for many, but for myself it was a nice little positive welcome back into the world I had left behind a few years ago.
It just goes to show just how resilient and stubborn we can be, we tend to focus on the bad here in Ireland, but through thick and thin the “scene” may not be as obvious anymore, but holy fuck is it still here, and it seems no matter what happens to try crush it, it just doesn’t happen.
Stay tuned for many more updates over the next few weeks.