Germany has a complicated relationship with modified cars. The country that invented the high-performance automobile, that gave the world the Nürburgring and the autobahn, runs one of the strictest vehicle modification regimes on the planet. Drive something sufficiently unusual on a German public road and you risk impoundment, a substantial fine, and the genuine possibility of being instructed to remove the car from the country. Enthusiasts from the UK, who understand that their own regulations are merely eccentric, routinely bring spare sets of number plates to Germany as insurance. This is the context in which car culture operates here.
Which makes what Club de Ultrace did in April 2026 considerably more interesting.
Ultrace Germany — the first time the Polish festival has expanded into Germany, held at the Areal Böhler in Düsseldorf, a former industrial site that provided the appropriately serious backdrop for what unfolded inside — was, by any reasonable assessment, a world-class automotive event. Not a parking lot with expensive cars in it. Not a brand activation with a DJ. An actual, carefully curated, meticulously presented gathering of historically significant and culturally important vehicles that would individually justify a transatlantic flight and collectively boggled the comprehension of people who had seen rather a lot of car shows.
Photographer Larry Chen, who arrived jet-lagged from the Forza Horizon 6 launch in Tokyo and spent the subsequent 24 hours in a state of documented disbelief, described the experience with characteristic precision: “There are car shows and there’s Ultrace.”
The headline cars were extraordinary. The Porsche GT1 in Marlboro livery — Marlboro Red, which is technically orange for reasons involving 1990s camera sensor limitations that made true orange read as red on television, and which has since become so associated with the era that correct red now looks wrong. The Mercedes CLK GTR street car, one of 25 ever built, which exists only because homologation rules required a road-going version of the GT1-class race car and Mercedes was the kind of company that would simply build 25 of them rather than argue about it. The Nissan R390 GT1, a car that exists so far outside the normal parameters of automotive discourse that it still surprises people who know it exists to encounter it in person. The Mercedes-Benz that flew at Le Mans in 1999 and has been preserved in its post-accident condition, which is the kind of exhibition decision that a car museum makes when it is confident enough in what it has to show it honestly.
Also present: all six generations of the BMW M3, displayed in pairs — one road-legal and one racing version from each era — in a dedicated celebration of the model’s 40th anniversary, with BMW M GmbH taking exclusive use of the Halle am Wasserturm, an industrial-flair venue where special editions were displayed alongside a live livery painting by automotive artist Rae Roberts. An E36 compact M3, the short-wheelbase variant built with the four-cylinder TI body and the full M3 powertrain, which is one of those cars that sounds like a factory mistake and drives like a very good idea. A Nissan R34 GT-R claiming to be a genuine Z-Tune, which would make it one of approximately 19 confirmed examples and worth somewhere in the region of £5 million, sitting without ropes, available for anyone to approach. This is either very brave or very confident or some combination.
The venue itself deserves separate mention. Ultrace did not put cars in a field. They built a show inside a series of industrial halls, using the existing architecture as part of the display, creating what Chen describes as distinct rooms — a silver Mercedes room, a BMW hall, a separate space for the Jägermeister-liveried cars — that required genuine exploration to navigate. Individual cars were displayed within circular guard rail installations that kept crowds at the right distance while allowing full 360-degree visibility. Elevated viewing platforms were provided to allow people to look down at cars rather than up at them, which sounds like a small detail and changes the entire experience. The event ran on 25-26 April at the Areal Böhler in Düsseldorf, described by organisers as a concept shaped by “the latest technical solutions in the event industry.”
The no-rope policy, which Chen specifically praises, is also worth noting. This is a philosophical position as much as a practical one. A car show with ropes everywhere is a car show that is protecting its reputation at the expense of the experience. A car show without ropes is a car show that trusts its visitors and believes the proximity matters. When the display you are trusting visitors to respect includes a potentially £5 million R34 GT-R and several Le Mans prototype race cars, this represents a considerable degree of confidence in the automotive community.
Modified car culture in Germany has always operated in the margins — the regulations push the most creative builds toward events rather than roads, which means that shows like Ultrace end up serving a function that car culture in less restrictive countries doesn’t need: they become the primary venue for the work, not a secondary celebration of it. With over 50,000 visitors at its Polish edition, Ultrace has become what its organisers describe as “the ultimate festival for the custom car scene in Europe.” The German edition suggests the ambition has not diminished.
The European car show scene has been reconfiguring for several years, as traditional motor shows contract and specialist enthusiast events expand to fill the gap. Ultrace Germany represents that expansion at its most serious. The Japanese car culture connection was evident in the JGTC cars and the R34 claiming Z-Tune status; Ultrace, whatever its Polish origins, functions as a genuinely international event. And the fact that the analogue racing car era is producing vehicles worth preserving in conditions approaching museum standard, then showing them without ropes at a car show, suggests that the line between collector culture and enthusiast culture is blurring in ways that events like this are uniquely positioned to exploit.
Ultrace Poland runs annually. Ultrace Germany is scheduled to return. Chen’s advice is direct and experience-based: go.
Bring spare number plates, just in case.
