Cars painted gold, bright green and neon blue flocked to the border crossing in Klein Haugsdorf early in the morning. But before the drivers were allowed to cross the border, they first had to go through the police checkpoints. 25 officers stood on both sides of Weinviertler Straße B303 and specifically looked for conspicuously tuned cars in order to direct them to the adjacent truck parking lot in a queue.
One of the drivers was Iris Enzelmüller from Laa an der Thaya (Mistelbach district). The 26-year-old had larger rims on her car and had coilovers installed to lower the car. “I had everything licensed, so I’m not afraid of being checked. I don’t understand why some people come here with illegally tuned cars, maybe they need a kick,” said Enzelmüller.
Excessive noise pollution
Together with vehicle technicians from the state government, the police took a look under the hood and at the body and tires. “Most of the unlawful manipulation concerns the noise, so we have major excesses here in terms of the legally regulated noise level for a car,” says operations manager Gottfried Macher from the state traffic department.
If you pimp your car, you have to have it entered in the registration certificate. If this does not happen, the police will report the accident or, in serious cases, the license plate will be removed immediately. Five drivers also lost their license plates during the center of gravity check in Kleinhaugsdorf and had to have their cars towed away in the morning.
There was a lack of understanding and anger among many of those affected, but the police emphasized that it was about safety on Austria’s roads. “The tires are often mounted in such a way that they rub against the body. There is then a risk that the tire will burst, which can be extremely dangerous not only for the driver but also for other people involved in traffic,” emphasizes Macher.
5,000 car junkies at the border
Those drivers who were driving legally made it to the finish after the check. The parking lot of Excalibur City – the shopping center just over the Czech border – turned into a Mecca for almost 5,000 car junkies. Among them was Philipp Schenk from Julbach in Upper Austria. The man from the Mühlviertel drives a car in which the entire body, the chassis and the interior have been tuned.
“I wasn’t checked when I entered the Czech Republic, but I had everything entered exactly, and I wouldn’t be afraid of a check either. It would only be annoying because you have to wait and we haven’t done anything illegal,” says the Upper Austrian.
The fact that the tuning scene generally has a bad reputation bothered many of the visitors at the autotuning event. Organizer Alexander Gruber attributed the increased police checks at the border to a few culprits in the autotuning scene.
“People who come from the right tuning scene and do it with passion actually know how to behave. But there are always those who don’t actually have such conspicuous cars and then behave extremely badly on the streets. They then pull everyone else with them, although these people are not doing anything illegal and are behaving peacefully on the streets,” says the organizer of the meeting at the border crossing.