Malaysians love their cars, that’s why it’s one of the biggest markets in South East Asia, not only do we love cars, most of us have a fair knowledge of cars. That’s why when the occassional motorshow comes around, there’s always massive traffic jams to accompany it, that and a whole lot more. Sure we are a small country and that’s probably why the visitor count for our shows never hit six figures but it surely never feels that way.
The sad thing about Malaysian motorshows is they are limited, not only in number but in depth, creativity and of course location. Only recently has there been shows entertaining people outside the state of Selangor, the most recent one being the first in the state of Perak, ‘Full Throttle’ provided a platform for Perakians to indulge in their motorsports passion albeit unforseen natural disasters. Torrential rain pounded the venue day after day bringing to a halt almost every program except for the drifting, naturally.
The show was like every other show in Malaysia except that it had an indoor arena as well as the usual outdoor booths with cars parked eratically. The cars were some of the best the local tuners had to offer mainy Monster Garage and Zero4. The formers legendary Supra made and appearance and got the crowd all excited to the extent they were crowding around it taking pictures as if a Hollywood hot shot had suddenly decided Ipoh would be the best place to take a vacation. Zero4 provided great entertainment with their drift car.
Talking about drifting, there was no lack of talent there as well. I say talent because the car’s they were drifting in looked as if they were going to fall apart at any minute and a flying tyre was inevitably going to shred someone to pieces but of course that didnt happen as there were plenty of oooh’s and aaah’s from the crowd as the drifters did their thing. It really took some courage to drift such cars on a drift track that had huge potholes right in the middle of the drift line, but no one seemed intimidated. See most of the drifters came from or had practised on the famed Dato Sagor track in Kampung Gajah, Perak so there were really no amateurs there.
Besides the drifting, there was the breakdancing that ironically saved the day when the heavens opened up. Taking place at the Stadium Indra Mulia, breakdancers from as far away as Iraq and other countries kept the sheltering crowd entertained and then of course there was MC Slyde from Malaysian rock band Dragon Red, you can always count on him to keep people smiling. And then of course, there were the girls.
They say the most beautiful girls in Malaysia come from Ipoh, they also say that if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all and that’s exactly what I’m going to do. Although the event could have been improved in certain aspects, it was fun and definately a good break for car fans of Perak. We met quite a number of ZTH fans there and cheers to them for visiting our booth, we’re glad we could offer some shelter from the rain. Check out the Full Throttle 2008 gallery by clicking on any of the thumbnails below.
