Gatebil Mantorp Park 2025 / travel story time

[Wobsmangbaffler]

Apologies that this should probably be in TBOT but you cant upload pictures directly there... blame my nutcase govt for banning imgur...
Prologue:
I first discovered Gatebil whilst watching the Bamse's Turbo Underpants series on Youtube. For the uninitiated, Gatebil translates to "Street car" and is a 4 night festival that runs at several different Scandi circuits throughout the summer. The main staple of the event is the on-track drifting action. The variety is pretty impressive, although there were plenty of RWD Volvos on track, they are definitely becoming thinner on the ground compared to footage I have seen of past events.

The car:
My steed of choice was my daily driver 1990 740 "facelift" estate. This is my first car that I have owned for 7 years at the time of writing this. It started off as a B200F (LH2.4 NA) manual car that I then swapped a B230FK, 531, 16T, and M90 into in 2023. I had it on the dyno making 262hp calculated crank power at 20psi. I took inspiration from James May's 850R setup in the Top Gear Africa special for my sleeping / storage arrangement. The window blackouts are cut from an 8'x4' sheet of Correx plastic sheeting- it is flexible enough to be removed easily, whilst the double wall permits for sufficient blackout-ness. Also not seen in this picture is a cut in the plywood base that allowed me to separate the rear ~2' at the rear of the car. I placed this vertically so that if I got rear ended whilst driving, the whole board would be shunted into my chair and cause me to be pinned against the steering wheel.

The route:
The journey in total came to 3,275 miles all in, and used 139.219 US gallons. This comes to 23.5mpg on average. I chose to get the ferry from Dover for cost efficiency instead of using the channel tunnel, arriving at Calais where I spent the first night. The next day I drove to Utrecht in the Netherlands to see a friend for night 2, and night 3 was then spent in Copenhagen in Denmark to see work friends who are posted there at the moment, before I made it to Sweden on day 4. I spent 10 days in sweden, travelling to Gothenburg for the Volvo museum, Stockholm to see Vasa, and plenty of the Swedish countryside. For what its worth, the car did not break down once for this trip, and used about half a litre of oil (leaking, not burning) which sufficiently coated my chassis ready for the salty roads this winter .


The main event:
The camping section for those staying the duration of the event is right next to the track behind the concrete barriers. I had been parked up for maybe 20 minutes before these legends adopted me, after I had explained my journey and that it was my first time both in Sweden and at Gatebil. They love rolling coal at Gatebil, and the Caddy had a Mercedes diesel engine swapped into it:


The paddocks were open access 24/7 for free roaming sober or drunk (I'm not sure I was sober for any of it honestly, I think everyone else feels the same way).
There were both grassroots and professional cars there. Most notable cars in attendance were Kevin Brunberg's kevlar 740, Blacksmoke Racing's Mercedes S123 with >900hp from an OM648, and Peter Bjork's Lamborghini V10 powered 240. I will just dump a load of the paddock photos below for you to admire:

 

[Wobsmangbaffler]

(yep, thats a rotary in a corvette)

 

[Wobsmangbaffler]

The drifting:
This section pretty much speaks for itself. The sessions were split into a free for all session where people could just have fun without intended competition, and then Saturday evening held a Norwegian vs Swedish competition featuring the more talented drivers. Again, I'll just photo spam below:

 

[Wobsmangbaffler]

Campsite scenes:
I don't quite know how to describe the scenery throughout the campsite. It was like nothing I've seen before. The general idea is the "party campsite" section is to be eternally drunk, dance on top of the pilsnerbils with all of your friends. People also like to cruise up and down the tracks playing obscenely loud music and rolling as much coal as possible. One of the more unexpected ego competitions between the youngsters is to arrive in the most battered bus possible. These are often old Scania busses that have had the insides filled with a sound system and a few beer taps. No room for anything else:

There are some nicer cars though. I believe this one has MK2 IRS from a 960 (it could also be a face swapped squinty eye 960).

One very famous staple of Volvo culture in Sweden is the stretched estate. These are made by chopping 2 estates together. I believe Sweden's yearly inspection actually lasts for 2 years. So, what they do is get a "friendly" inspection against each of the VINs from both cars, allowing for 4 years on the road before it has to be scrapped (or have the VIN plates swapped).

Alternatively, here in Europe, roof tents have "taken off", and were found on a significant number of cars here.

Our lovely friends the coal rollers spotted around the site:


Finally, the pilsnerbils. You can see the spectrum of how trashed they can be. Believe it or not, both are totally legal to drive on Swedish roads. The 2nd picture is the aftermath of the Saturday night party at the end of the event.

 

[Wobsmangbaffler]

On the subject of aftermaths. Here is Kevin Brunberg's car after the weekend of drifting. You can probably appreciate why he uses the relatively flexible kevlar and polycarbonate combo compared to the original steel.


Conclusion:
As antisocial as this event may appear, I could not have felt any safer or more welcome as a foreigner to such a crazy event. I was quite nervous initially being a solo traveller to this event, but everyone I talked to was more than willing to hang out, share a beer, and show me whatever automotive machine they had brought along with them. It was a huge help that everyone spoke English incredibly well, and so the language barrier was non-existent. The craftsmanship, ingenuity, and pride in the mods done to the cars put the frankly dismal "finance whip" UK car scene to shame. I seriously recommend checking this event out, even if its just for the day should you find yourself in the country when its going down.

I also have a bunch of video recordings that I'm going to sift through and upload the good ones to Youtube, but I hope this provides good browsing for now

 

[mikep]

Holy SHIT. I want to do the drive on your map. It had me laughing aloud.

 

[mikep]

Holy SHIT. I want to do the drive on your map. It had me laughing aloud.

I mean, I do some big road trips, but that looks amazing.

 

[JW240]

Great trip, thanks for sharing.
Coming year(s) also planning something like this with friends, need to make plans.

 

[doucheNozzle]

This is epic. I want to do this.