Gravity 2023

Gravity - brought to you by the guys at Slammed UK - has gone from strength to strength over the past few years. With an emphasis on extreme quality from every car that's accepted to display, we've always enjoyed attended this event, not to mention watching it grow bigger. That last point is important too, because for 2023 this show had to fill two huge halls of a completely new venue - the world-famous Birmingham National Exhibition Centre.

Now, while we've no doubt that it was a daunting task for the organisers, we also had no doubt that it would be a great event. And you know what? As it turns out we were right.

But, before we even knew that for sure we decided to take the plunge and go all out for this one. As long-time supporters of the show this year we took along more vehicles than ever before. Among them six AF project cars, one HGV transporter, two huge vans, our AirStream pop up store, a pro drift car and our recovery lorry. Now who's say we don't make the maximum effort when it comes to supporting the UK show scene, eh? Just to make sure this one was even more special we also decided to showcase our entire range of AF x FLGNTLT collaboration products, which we don't have to tell you are still extremely hot of the press.

What with all that lot there's no doubt that Gravity 2023 was going to be a good one… all we needed to do was get the whole lot on the road and up to Birmingham ready for one almighty setup.

Aside from all three of our MK1 VW Caddy trucks parked up next to our AirStream mobile store, our Datsun over in the drift arena and our Pandem GR Yaris sat on its new wheels and featured pride of place on the Identity Wraps stand, there was one other big AF unveiling for the weekend. That was of course our BMW M2 Competition with its fresh new livery. Designed by Black Fish Graphics and applied by the team at Identity just hours before the show we have to say that we're absolutely loving the new look for our track special - check it out below and feel free to let us know what you think on our social media channels.

So yes, we had a lot of our own AF projects on display this year and, as you can imagine, that also meant a lot of perfecting when we got there. On the bright side though, perfecting cars is exactly what we do, so we've got this down to a fine art nowadays and it didn't take long for our detailers to break out the detailing essentials and have them gleaming well before the doors opened.

In fact, as the biggest experts on the art of detailing in the UK, we were also asked if we could land a hand on perfecting quite a few of the more special cars around the halls - not least Gravity's own carbon-clad, bagged Lamborghini and the world-famous Gumball 3000 Jaguar XJ220S. It makes sense though, who else were they going to ask, eh? And of course, the best bit about detailing at two-day event like this is that we got to do it all over again on the Sunday…

It almost goes without saying that the show cars we found right here are some of the very best that the UK has to offer. Even so, we were still surprised at the sheer quality, not to mention and variety, of those that made it to the NEC.

What's also great for us is that we got to go around and check them out before the doors opened to the public, which is pretty handy because this show was absolutely rammed all weekend… getting any decent snaps of our favourites for this article would have been almost impossible!

When it comes to the cars we liked most though, there was certainly a lot to choose from… but we'll let the pictures do the talking here. Be sure to swipe through our special gallery below to see if we captured your favourites…

It wasn't just the static stuff at Gravity that we couldn't get enough of, either. The outdoor drift arena saw a whole load of top rubber-destroying entertainment this year. Put together by the guys at Crew Sade and Monster Energy we were also invited along to join pro drifters such as Luke Woodham and Baggsy for more than a couple of sideways laps in our Datsun GX. Our own resident "Crazy Drift Kid', Archie was on hand to put the little Japanese terror through its paces - but not before tearing up the tarmac in his own AF sponsored BMW drift car. Still, it wasn't just the tarmac that he was ripping up, either. Like all competition drifters Archie has a tendency to go hard, just as he should, and on one of the runs his E36 took on a fair bit of battle damage… but, then again, that's just drifting, right? As you can imagine, the AF pit crew soon got to work and he was fixed up and back out there in next to no time.

As you'd expect from an event like this, many a trophy was given out to the top cars, all extremely well-deserved we might ad. One of the most important ones to us of course was our Sponsor's Choice Award, and we have to say the competition was extremely tough this year. In the end though we chose this super slick Toyota Celsior, a bona fide Yakuza special for sure. Not only did this slammed Japanese luxo barge have an interior we'd all like to spend a fortnight holiday in, but we were properly loving the crazy disco lightshow from the custom rear clusters. We're quite partial to an old skool Lexus LS it has to be said, but somehow this Toyota version looked so much cooler. VIP style doesn't get any classier, or more authentic JDM, than this!

All in all then, and as you can see, the new look Gravity at the Birmingham NEC was an absolute stormer. The good news, too, is that we already know this one will be returning to the NEC for 2024 and, as the dates are still to be announced, we'd recommend keeping an eye on the Gravity website for updates.

Thanks to everyone who came by the stand over the course of the weekend and for more event reports from the UK, Europe and the rest of the world check out the Shows section of our Blog.