We have another update on the Streetwarz saga – Please see THIS POST.

Is this the end of Streetwarz? Although I wasn’t there myself, it has been reported that on Saturday (16th May) the Police kindly took to issuing defect notices on the majority of cars leaving the Streetwarz venue and then moved in and closed down the day’s proceedings under the local council’s order.

Haven’t heard about Streetwarz? Check it out HERE

Being a family friendly site I can’t exactly let loose with what I really want to say, suffice to say that there are many modified car enthusiasts out there that are disappointed in what has gone done this weekend, but from what I am hearing all was not as it seemed with Streetwarz to begin with.

Allegedly the council had not given permission for the events to go ahead, contrary to the promoters own words a few weeks earlier and what they had organized was in breach of land use regulations for that area. Sure councils can be notoriously hard to deal with when stepping outside of the ‘normal’ use for a particular area (try setting up a home workshop in an area deemed rural but close to residential boundaries – not worth the hassle) but with several hundred thousand dollars (allegedly) on the line you would think that the organizers had all the ‘t’s crossed and all the ‘i’s dotted with the council.

Now what we have is a situation where the owners (or drivers) of the vehicles that got hit with a defect notice are feeling pretty damn pissed off and very slim chances of such an event continuing anywhere close anytime soon. Perhaps with a bit more planning and consultation with the right people these problems could have been avoided.

Now for the other side of the argument. The organizers should be applauded for ‘taking it off the streets’ and providing an area where people could come and enjoy their cars safely and hang out with other like-minded people. So what is with the Police arriving and defecting almost every car leaving the place? If they wanted to shut it down why not just come in and do that? No, instead they see the ‘gathering’ as an easy target for revenue raising which is why owning a modified car in Queensland is getting harder and harder all the time. Even if the mod’s are carried out to every letter of the modification laws they will find something to nab you for and this I know from experience.

I can’t help but wonder why the authorities don’t assist in getting an event like this off the ground. It gets drivers off the streets to enjoy their cars, providing a potentially safer environment for every day drivers and pedestrians but instead they continue to try and stamp it out with huge fines and impounding of the cars involved.

Haven’t they realised by now that this kind of thing will continue to go on no-matter what they do to stamp it out? As in a number of car related forums some members are already talking about where they can go instead of Streetwarz, and with little options no doubt it will end up back on the street somewhere! Wake up and work together to solve this problem instead of treating us all like criminals.

That’s my rant for the night, if there are any changes to the Streetwarz situation we will post them up but in the meantime take it easy on the roads, hopefully one day there will be some resolution to this continuing problem.

Latest Streetwarz Update HERE.

Craig