Is it time to replace your race suit? Let’s get you track-ready. Gravity Show 2026: Ten Years At The NEC, Through Cameron's Lens
Show report, NEC Birmingham, 29 to 30 August 2026
Gravity turned ten this year, and it marked the birthday the way it marks everything, by getting bigger. Two days at the NEC over the August bank holiday weekend, halls full of metal from every corner of car culture, and a crowd that the organisers were talking about in the tens of thousands. Cameron went on our behalf, phone in hand, while Garreth kept the counter open in Nottingham.
What follows is his walk round, in the order the cars stopped him. Some are worth more than the building we work in, some were built on a driveway, and the honest truth is the driveway ones held him longest. Every photograph on this page is one of his.
- NEC Birmingham, Saturday 29 and Sunday 30 August 2026, the tenth Gravity Show
- Started at Stoneleigh Park in 2016 and moved to the NEC in 2023, so the anniversary was on the big stage
- Cameron went for us on the Saturday and shot everything on this page
- Hypercars, a Formula One car, a hall of Skylines, and the driveway builds that held him longest
- The 2027 dates go straight onto our events calendar the moment they are announced
Walking in
The NEC swallows a car show. Gravity fills several halls and still spills out into the arenas, and the first thing you learn is to stop trying to see all of it. Cameron's rule was simple: stop for anything that made him look twice, and let the rest go.
The first row inside the door set the pattern for the day. A clean E30 convertible on the right BBS wheels next to a Ferrari that somebody had wrapped like a school exercise book, and nobody was pretending one was better than the other. That is Gravity in a sentence.
The reveals and the money
The anniversary show promised hypercars and delivered them in a row. The Veyron on the hero was the crowd magnet: polished aluminium on the front and rear thirds, raw carbon weave through the middle, and a permanent ring of phones around it. Two stands along sat a McLaren P1 in matte orange with both doors up and the wing raised, on a modular floor that matched it. Cameron’s note on the P1 was short: it looks smaller in real life than you expect, and meaner.
Left: the Veyron head on, the carbon bonnet meeting the polished wings at the horseshoe grille. Right: the P1 with everything open, exactly as you would leave it if you owned one and wanted people to know.
The Revuelto was parked with its back to the aisle, which is the right way round. The hexagonal exhaust vents, the exposed V12 under the rear glass and that diffuser do more talking than the front ever could, and the matte grey let the shapes do the work. Cameron watched a lad of about eight stand in front of it for a full minute without saying a word, which is the review that counts.
The bare McLaren deserves its own line. With the panels off you can see how little of a modern supercar is actually car: a carbon tub, an engine hung off the back, and a lot of very neat plumbing. For anyone who has ever fitted a seat or a harness and wondered where the strength really lives, it is a better lesson than any diagram we could draw.
The motorsport corner
This is the corner Cameron was always going to gravitate to, and the Renault Formula One car was the reason. Seen from standing height the car is barely knee high, the front wing is wider than the car itself, and the Pirelli sidewalls carry more branding than the whole bodywork of most touring cars. It was displayed on the Elite Competitions stand, and the queue to photograph it never really shortened.
Two ways to make an engine sing. Left: the Renault from behind, rear wing and endplates in the crowd's eyeline. Right: a dark green 911 restomod with gold individual throttle body trumpets and a carbon airbox, a flat six built to be looked at as much as driven.
The 190E Evo II stopped him for a different reason. It is one of the great touring car shapes, the boxy Mercedes with the enormous rear wing that took on the E30 M3 in the DTM, and this one wore a proper period style livery with the sponsor decals to match. Two of those decals were Corbeau and JP Cages, which is a nice thing to spot on a car you had already decided you liked. Whoever built it knows their seats and their cages.
Along from the single seater sat a current TCR UK Civic Type R in pink and black, which is a colour combination that should not work and does, next to an R33 era Skyline set up for the track. The Civic is a reminder that the hot hatch you can buy on Monday becomes a racing car with surprisingly few changes, most of them inside: a seat, a harness, a cage, and a lot of stickers.
Skylines everywhere
If one car summed up the anniversary it was Gravity's own R32 GT-R, a light blue and white tribute to the Group A years with the Union flag on the bonnet and yellow headlights, parked on the Pop Race stand where you could buy a scale model of the very car you were looking at. Cameron reports that the queue for the models was longer than the queue for the car.
It was not alone. R32s were everywhere this year, one polished for a concours stand and the next one wearing drift scars, and the show could have been renamed for the weekend without anyone objecting.
Old school, done properly
The Gullwing stopped everyone, and it stopped Cameron twice, once from each end. Pale blue, cream leather, polished disc wheels tucked well up into the arches and both doors open like a butterfly, parked on a detailing stand where it was probably the most photographed advert in the building. We did not ask whether it was original or a recreation, and at that ride height we suspect the owner would rather you did not either.
The gold E-Type is the sort of car that divides a showroom. Purists will hate the arches and the splitter. Cameron, who is not a purist, walked round it three times and photographed it from the one angle where the original shape and the new one agree. What is not up for debate is the quality of the paint, which was as deep as anything on the hypercar stands.
The Cortina was the quiet one. A Mk2 two door in deep purple, bagged to the floor, badge on the boot and a club sticker in the rear window. Nobody had roped it off and nobody was queuing for it, and it was one of the cleanest cars in the building. Cameron's photograph of it has the food hall sign in the background, which is exactly where a Cortina belongs at a British car show.
The modified staples
Between the exotics and the classics sits the real body of the show: the cars people actually build. Wide arches, air ride, polished lips, a boot full of subwoofers and an interior that cost more than the car did. This is the stuff Cameron photographs for the counter, because it is what our customers are building too.
Left: the teal R32 again, from the angle that shows the arches, the Osaka style show plate and the rear wing. Right: a deep green wide-body Silvia S15 on polished deep dish wheels, with tan bucket seats inside that Cameron clocked before he clocked the wing.
Left: a red E36 coupe with tan leather buckets, gold split rims and the air ride install laid out in the boot for inspection. Right: a blue Vauxhall Adam with a boot built around twin ESX subwoofers and more blue LED than the rest of the hall combined.
The South African E30 wins the award for theme. Flag livery down the flanks, the same flag laid on the floor, teal BBS centres and, under the bonnet, an engine painted the same teal with the BMW script picked out. You either commit to a theme or you do not, and this owner committed.
Wide arches on a new Mustang
Two frames for one car, because it earned them. The new Mustang is already a wide car and this one wore a full carbon kit on top: bonnet, arches, splitter, side skirts and a wing on stands tall enough to read the time off. In black cherry it looked like something out of a race series that does not exist yet, and Cameron would like it noted that he wants one.
Two wheels, briefly
Gravity is a car show, but the two bikes Cameron photographed would have held their own at any bike show. The Thornton Hundred Triumph on the K and N stand is a bobber built like a piece of jewellery, and the green and copper Diavel V4 proves Ducati can do colour when it wants to.
What Cameron brought back to the counter
Ten years in, Gravity has become the show where the whole hobby meets. Cameron came home with three things: a phone full of photographs, a list of cars to look up, and the same observation he makes every year, which is that the cars people stop at longest are the ones somebody built themselves. The Veyron had the crowd, but the Cortina and the South African E30 had the conversations.
The other thing he noticed, because it is his job to, is how many of the modified cars had proper seats in them. Tan buckets in the S15, leather buckets in the E36, a Corbeau decal on a 190E built to a standard most race cars would envy. The interior is where a build gets finished, and Gravity is where you see what finished looks like. Garreth will have the 2027 dates on our events calendar the moment they are announced, and the Gravity page is already there if you want the details of this one.
Seats, harnesses, steering wheels, helmets and race wear: if a build at Gravity gave you an idea, ring Garreth and Cameron on 0115 9893488 and describe it. Most of the kit in those photographs is on our shelves, and the rest we can get.
If a car at Gravity has you thinking about a seat, a wheel, a helmet or a suit, tell us which one and Cameron will tell you what it was wearing. Every UK show, race meeting and hill climb we have checked is on our events calendar, and we are in Nottingham if you would rather sit in the kit than guess.
