What a Final

The biggest Event ever under the Brand of EMMA was an impression of how huge this organisation has grown the last three Years. With a total of 141 competing Cars and Guests from 26 Countries it was breaking all records in Competition in Europe. This happened even if the City of St. Petersburg is on border of the Continent and not easy to reach. The longest Trip was made by a contestant from east Sibiria who had to travel more then 4500 km to get there. It was the second time that a national Association was running the Finals as an independent event, not connected to any other Exhibition like tuning or automobile Shows. The Area was divided into two spaces, one for the competition and one for exhibitors. The List of companies who presented their product is like the who is who in mobile media business. The main electronic manufacturers like Alpine, Clarion, Pioneer, Kenwood, Panasonic, Nakamichi, were added by almost all important Brands of Speakers, Amps and Accessories like: PHD, Genesis, DLS, Alto Mobile, Tchernov Audio, Soundstream, Prology, Brax, Magnat, Ground Zero, JL Audio, Lightning Audio, Calcell, Focal, Infinity, JBL, MTX, Fusion, Morel, Audiobahn, Rockford Fosgate etc. The amount of Visitors was around 25 000. The beginning of the competition Days was on Wednesday with the national Finals of Russia in Sound Quality, ESPL and dB Drag which took part also on Thursday. The real Show started on Friday with the European Championships in Sound Quality. This Year it was the idea to complete the whole sound quality judging process within one day, which was properly working because of the great number of Judges from 20 Countries (in total 46 Judges). We started up at 10°° and finished the last Car at 9:30 in the evening. The average quality was unbelievable high and probably the best in the World. The 116 Contestants showed a Fireworks of fantastic Installations and also the sounding was great. First time also the Multi media class was in the competition and also that was a great experience because of the diversity the systems showed to the judges and the public. The Highlights were the Cars from Anders Fleischer (BMW/Norway) who had the best of Install and Dimitry Matveev (Mini/Russia) who had the highest score in Total and also the best of Sound. It is difficult to describe but according to our Rules we are close to the border of what is maximum possible inside a car and the level of judging was also increasing during the last Year. The Saturday started with the first European ESPL Championship and it was again working real good so that the Ceremony could start at a few minutes after 4 o´clock . The beginning was made by Jury Tsebers chief of the Car Music Magazine which powered the Event and Dimitry Matveev who was the Event Director. Also on the Stage were Victoria Senukhina from Midexpo Fair Company and Jacek Kwiatkowski (Head Judge Install/Poland), Reinier Wolf (Head Judge Sound/Netherlands). It has been a real emotional Price giving with a spetacular "Striptease" of Manfred Eufinger( Amateur unl) from Germany who showed the audience his "better side" covered by a string Tanga. In the evening everybody went to Ostrava Club which was exclusive rent for the EMMA Party and even the waitress were wearing EMMA Shirts. It is not necessary to say that this was the real event because more then 450 guests were dancing laughing and enjoying the several Shows the Club was doing with some well known people from EMMA except me because I was sleeping in the Bus outside (sorry). Pictures from this Party will be online soon under www.sacknuesse.de ( we got you all). The Sunday was free of action and almost all friends used the time to visit the wonderful City of St. Petersburg with its famous buildings and museums. As a resume I can say that it will be hard to keep this level of Events but we will try in anyway. If EMMA will be able to bring this spirit of 2003 Eurofinals to everyone around our hobby we will have even bigger Competitions. In a world of crisis and economical problems we set up a complete new level of relationship between all Nations. Nobody cared about where you are coming from and what are you doing it was just friendship everywhere.
In the End let me thank all friends from Midexpo ( Irina the Boss, Nikolay, Victoria, Dennis, Anton, Margarita etc), the guys from Car Music Magazine, the friends from EMMA Russia, Reinier, Jacek, Dima, Chris, Uli and of course Peter Fuhrmann. You did a great job.

So see you in Sinsheim or better at the Head Judge training

Alex Klett