Wörthersee 2018 photo thread

There's an official event which lasts for three days, centred around Reifnitz on the edge of the lake. It was originally a local Golf GTI club event that invited other clubs over for a long weekend, which over the past 37 years has grown and grown... These days VW themselves have a big corporate stand with new cars (and in recent years areas dedicated to enthusiast clubs too), there are trade areas, a tarmac area where they have stunt bikes/burnouts/bands/acts etc etc and food/beer stalls everywhere.

That's only the very last few days though. It's in a beautiful tourist area - Carinthia in Austria ("The German riviera"), so over the years people have made a holiday of it, stretching it out over the whole week, then two... Nowadays you could spend three weeks there and still not fit everything in.

There are maybe six or seven main locations around the lake and up the road at other lakes (Faakersee and Ossiachersee in particular) so with a bit of sharp social media watching you can find two or three different organised meets a day at various places. Drive around and see a bit of them all... There might be an international Golf Rallye meet up in the car park at the Pyramidenkogel, a Mk1 Golf meet at Faakersee, a wheel company might arrange a meet in Reifnitz to show off customer cars etc etc... You could go and sit in a roadside cafe outside the casino in Velden, watch the cars all cruise by and then get a speedboat across the lake to Reifnitz to see what's happening there... All organised via forums and facebook etc. There's a lot to take in! Been going since 2004, never gets old

Do it!

We rent a house, we've rented the same one every year since 2006. It's in Poertschach which is one of the towns on the lake. We get on well with the owner, he reserves it for us every year! There are loads of apartments, rooms, houses etc in the area but they do book up fast. There's loads of camping too!

Yellow VW passat B5 Variant passat_dave.3b by Wörthersee Pics, on Flickr

BMW E30 Touring @e30pandem_sander by Wörthersee Pics, on Flickr

Green VW Passat B5.5 Variant @passalex_3bg by Wörthersee Pics, on Flickr

Mercedes Benz W201 190 by Wörthersee Pics, on Flickr

Purple VW Golf Mk1 Cabrio by Wörthersee Pics, on Flickr

Red VW Golf Mk1 Cabrio by Wörthersee Pics, on Flickr

Red Audi 80 B2 by Wörthersee Pics, on Flickr

Orange VW Golf Mk1 by Wörthersee Pics, on Flickr

I absolutely LOVED this!

White Daimler Sovereign XJ40 by Wörthersee Pics, on Flickr

White Daimler Sovereign XJ40 by Wörthersee Pics, on Flickr

Some wheel things. If you've been looking closely you'll have spotted that as well as all the aftermarket wheel manufacturers (Vossen, Rotiform, Rad48 etc etc) there are a few other trends that are big.

1) Taking old OEM alloys and making them in to split rims:

White VW Golf Mk1 by Wörthersee Pics, on Flickr

Yellow VW Corrado by Wörthersee Pics, on Flickr

2) I'm not sure about how this is done, so correct me if I'm wrong, but this look is popular - BBS splits re-arranged so the centre is on the outside (I think that's it?). Keeps the tyres within the arches (so it'll sit right down when the airride is dropped) but gives a wider stance.

VW Scirocco Mk1 SLN631R by Wörthersee Pics, on Flickr

3) Taking old, smaller-diameter BBS Split centres and matching them up to custom larger outers, turning them in to 17" or 18" or whatever diameter and the offset of your choice:

BMW E92 Coupe @e92_jef by Wörthersee Pics, on Flickr

White VW Golf Mk7 @vwbaz by Wörthersee Pics, on Flickr

BMW e23 732i by Wörthersee Pics, on Flickr

Great set of pics as always. I have to admit, I don't really understand watercooled VolksWagens but that white Daimler was worth the price of admission alone

How loud is it? I need my beauty sleep

I think Mk1s are perhaps at a point now where they are historic as much as they are scene-worthy, so the incentive is to keep them nice and straight and clean as that's ultimately where the value is. Plus I think the German tax laws over historic vehicle status prevent too many mods? I don't know...

Wheel styles change, things like that, and a lot of them look fairly restrained but have big 20 valve motors (or later TFSI power) etc. There's a possy of wide-body berg-cup style motorsport ones that scream about the place but I haven't got that far with the photo processing yet!


oh, to give you an idea about the photos... I've sorted through maybe 500 of them so far.

Here's the folder:



I've got a long way to go