Hard to believe it has been a year since my last blog post about the largest Kit Car show in the World held in Stoneleigh (near Coventry) each May.

Last year my trip to Stoneleigh was made full of enthusiasm. I was halfway through my build, had a list of parts I needed and jobs to be done.

Twelve months on and the car is finished and has spent the winter in the garage gathering dust. I really currently don't need to get anything for the car and whilst I would love to start another build tomorrow, but with a new baby in the house and the current economic environment, I have no plans to start a new build anytime soon.

So with no shopping list and no new car build on the horizon, the trip to Stoneleigh was more out of interest than anything else, and that is probably why I felt strangely disappointed with the show.

All the usual suspects were there and the show was fairly crowded but I just struggled to get into the show.

Once again, I visited the show with my good friend and business partner Peter who is a hardcore 'off road' fan and is currently trying to persuade his better half to let him build his own kit car so one thing we did want to checkout was the Dakar 4x4 area.

As ever there was plenty of great cars to checkout and I remembered to take a few photos to include in my blog. Here are the highlights.

The first car we saw was a beauty. Not sure what it is, maybe a Beauford but not sure.

Cobras as far as the eye can see. The Cobra club was well represented and the sunshine ensured a good turnout.

Same thing for Lotus 7 style cars. Made me think I should have taken mine (except it is in bits at the moment but more on that in a later post).

One of the first cars we saw inside the hall was the new Storm Warrior which is a Hummer H1 replica. This is an enormous car but it looked cool.

Factory Five Racing had a pair of Cobras on their stand. I love this 'Les Mans' version of the car.

I also really liked this Murciélago replica by Extreme Cars which are based in my home town of Hull. Impressively, they had a real car and their replica side by side on stand, and they looked identical. I am not usually interested in this type of thing but I was really sold on this so I think it is certainly something I will investigate further over the next 12 months.

As I mentions, Peter has a great interest in 4x4's and specifically Land Rovers but anything 'jeep' like was worth a look.

We also saw this new monster by Dakar called the mutant. Dakar were also running passenger rides around an off road course in standard Dakar cars. We went round the course and can recommend it to anyone. It was a fairly hardcore course but the Dakar handled it with easy but it was a hell of a ride for£4!

More dream cars in the form of Ultima GRT's.

And maybe not everyone's dream car but I still love the old Nova kit car. I would love to buy an old one of these and restore it.

Just look at them!

And finally on dream cars (well mine anyway), Stratos replicas.

Westfield were running passenger rides, looked really exciting but there was a big line.

Plenty of Ferrari replicas.

Heading back in to the halls, there was plenty to grab our attention.

Such as Sebring,

Dax 427 &

And this XK120 replica.

Having exhausted our time at Stoneleigh, we decided to head over the the Motor Heritage Museum where there was a Land Rover show on. I don't know much about Landies so here are some pictures I took.

Great parking.

Modified Land Rovers used in the Judge Dredd film.

This is the actual Defender used by Angelina Jolie used in the Tomb Raider films.

Specially modified to look like the one in Shaun The Sheep!

And this is what Peter drives.

We then headed in to the Heritage Museum to see some fantastic cars.

Lady Penelope's car from Thunderbirds.

World record diesel car.

So that was our exciting day out.

More news on my car build very soon.