Ice King Battle: Full Send

There are events that make perfect sense. Circuit days. Drift events. Hill climbs. Drag racing. Then there are the ones where someone has looked at a mountain in the middle of winter and thought... "I wonder how fast we could drive a car up that?" That is Ice King Battle. Held in the German ski resort of Schöneck, the concept is beautifully simple. Take a black run. Leave it exactly as nature intended, covered in snow and ice. Build a start line at the bottom. A finish line at the top. Then invite some of Europe's wildest machinery to see who can get there the quickest. It's part drag race. Part hill climb. Part survival. And unlike almost everything else on the calendar, nobody really knows what the perfect car looks like. Some arrive with 2,000bhp drag monsters. Others unload genuine World Rally Championship cars that have spent their lives doing exactly this sort of thing. Time Attack cars, drift cars, rallycross builds and home-built specials all line up together, united by one common problem. Traction. For us, it was something we'd never experienced before. So naturally, we said yes.

The Datsun wasn't built for this. Far from it. Our little GX1200 was originally built as a drift demo car. Tiny, loud and completely unhinged. Underneath the classic body sits a fully built SR20 making around 575bhp. It weighs just 750kg, which gives it the sort of power-to-weight ratio that turns every straight into an argument with the rear tyres. Normally those rear tyres are producing clouds of smoke. This time they were fitted with hundreds of metal studs. That was the extent of our preparation. No clever drivetrain conversions. No winter testing. No data. Just bolt on a set of studded tyres, point it at a snow-covered mountain and see what happens. Sometimes that's enough.

Standing at the bottom of the piste for the first time is difficult to describe. Photos flatten everything. Videos never really show just how steep it is. From the start line you're looking almost directly uphill. The course disappears into the trees before climbing higher towards the finish, carved into a black ski run that's still buried beneath fresh snow. It feels ridiculous. It feels impossible. Then the first car launches. Studded tyres claw at the ice, turbochargers scream against the rev limiter and the sound echoes around the mountains like artillery. Snow explodes behind every car as they fight for every metre of grip. Some make it. Some don't. The mountain decides.

It didn't take long to understand that outright horsepower wasn't everything. In fact, sometimes it was the enemy. The cars making the biggest numbers often struggled to put any of it down. Even with four-wheel drive, 2,000 horsepower is difficult enough to manage on tarmac. On compacted snow and ice, it becomes almost laughable. Every launch looked different. Every driver had their own approach. Some feathered the throttle. Some committed completely. Some barely made it twenty metres before disappearing sideways into the snow banks. That's what made Ice King Battle so addictive to watch. Nobody was guaranteed anything.

Then it was our turn. The little Datsun looked almost comical amongst the machinery surrounding it. Purpose-built drag cars. Modern four-wheel-drive monsters. Ex-works rally machinery. And then this tiny seventies saloon sitting on skinny studded tyres. The lights dropped. The SR20 came onto boost. And suddenly the Datsun was gone. The best way to describe it? Like watching a Jack Russell that's just been let off the lead. It never stopped moving. Every correction led to another correction. The rear stepped out. It dug itself back in. Snow sprayed twenty feet into the air as the little car bounced from one side of the course to the other, refusing to give up. It wasn't elegant. It certainly wasn't tidy. But it was absolutely flat out. We knew before we even arrived that, as a rear-wheel-drive car, we had no realistic chance of challenging the overall times. Physics wasn't on our side. Against purpose-built four-wheel-drive drag cars and genuine WRC machinery, we simply didn't have the tools for the job. But that's never really been the point. Out of the seven rear-wheel-drive cars that entered the event, only three managed to make it all the way to the finish line. The Datsun was one of them. We'll happily take that victory.

As incredible as the racing was, it was only half the story. The event itself is unlike anything we've ever experienced. Visitors don't simply walk through a gate. They arrive by ski lift. Floating silently over the neighbouring mountain before dropping into the valley below, where Ice King Battle suddenly reveals itself. From above, it looks more like a winter festival than a motorsport event. Temporary pit garages stretch across the snow with over fifty competing cars lined up side by side. Engines being warmed. Bonnets open. Drivers making last-minute changes with frozen hands. Next to the paddock sits a stage pumping music throughout the day before carrying on long into the night. The static display is something else entirely. Some of the coolest cars in Europe are parked on fresh white snow as if it's completely normal. Liberty Walk builds sit alongside immaculate classics. Time Attack weapons share space with low, perfectly styled street cars. Every direction you look there's something worth stopping for. It feels raw. Nothing is overproduced. Nothing feels corporate. It's just enthusiasts creating something they wanted to see. That honesty is what gives it its character.

We left Germany exhausted, frozen and already talking about coming back. The Datsun survived. The mountain won plenty of battles. We came home with a result we're genuinely proud of. More importantly, we came home reminded that there are still people out there pushing car culture forwards. Not by copying what already exists. But by having the confidence to build something completely their own. If this is what the future of enthusiast events looks like... Count us in.