UpsideDown Festival: 100+ Custom Cars, 100+ Epic Photos

With the summer officially starting last week, it was about time to get back on writing my festival-themed posts.

Despite living in a city where festivals take place often even when it's not summer, between June and late September, the city is home to tens of festivals and events of all kinds, which is also a good excuse to get outside the house more often than usual.

Therefore, as a person who constantly feeds her inner child, there was no way to spend the International Children's Day (June 1st) at home. That's how, when scrolling through events and possible options about how to spend this day, I've found out about UpsideDown Festival which is a pretty new festival in town and where you also need to get a ticket for, a thing that is not so common for the rest of events that take place in Sibiu.

UpsideDown Festival was born last year in May, but had great success from its first edition. So the event was repeated again in the same year, but this time in Constanta, a different city in Romania.

I remember reading and finding out about UpsideDown Festival when both the news and many TV channels were speaking about it, and after it had already taken place. So I made myself a promise that I won't miss the next edition.

If you've been following me for a while, you'll know that I'm a car enthusiast, and I participate in numerous car events. So, you might wonder what news I could see from the over 500 cars I've spotted at events so far?

Well, UpsideDown Festival is different from any other car event held in Sibiu. First, it's a festival of custom-tuned cars where you won't find a single car looking or performing the same as the others of the same model. But then there are also very interesting models of cars that are very rare in Europe. As you might guess, I'm talking about the American brand of cars.

My boyfriend loves Dodges, and it's one of his favourite brands of cars, although we don't see ourselves driving one in this life. But when I got to stay so close and even touch the models present at the UpsideDown Festival, I realised that it might quickly become one of my favourite cars as well. It's just so hard to compare it with any other brand of car.

Even if Dodges are not so easy to meet on the streets of Romania, things are a bit different when it comes to Mustangs.

During my stay in Bucharest (the capital of Romania), these cars could be seen pretty often, but they are not so common in Sibiu, though. So I was really happy to see some models present during the festival, which still brings a personal touch despite being more popular than Dodges are.

There was actually another model that I spotted a bit later and in a different part of the exhibition, which is a Mustang Shelby fully custom tuned, parked next to a Cupra Formentor, what more could I ask for?

They also shared a similar car wrapping, so it made sense to be placed next to each other, but really now, they both are part of my top 5 favourite models of cars!

The last American car that I am absolutely convinced you can't spot in Romania in a different context than being part of a car event, was a Hammer, yet what I like to call the father of all the other American cars.

Happily, the UpsideDown Festival is full of cars with a personal touch and it's easy to get lost between the vehicles while trying to think what might be the star of the edition, but I think we can all agree here that a Hammer is quite rare to see and it's imposing enough to let the car itself share what words can't. Because it's truly hard to find your words and make a description while sitting next to a Hammer.

And speaking of Hammer, I managed to snap a picture of its inside, but also some of the other cars seen during the event, which looked absolutely stunning and can already give you an idea of how much the owners of these cars love their vehicles.

Another brand of car that I had a guilty pleasure for since I was a kid was the Mercedes G64 AMG. Sadly, I couldn't spot any of these during the UpsideDown Festival but only two Brabus models, which in fact are known for using the Mercedes AMGs as the base for their vehicles.

Along with the Brabus, I could spot a few more Mercedes cars that you can see in the pictures from above.

It's incredible how, despite having Mercedes quite a common brand of cars in Romania there are still owners who manage to make their vehicles look unique in comparison with the rest. Yet a great demonstration of what a car enthusiast is versus a common driver who gets a car just to meet their needs.

Another demonstration of a true car enthusiast was made on this Volkswagen Eos that at first I thought it was an Audi, but which was custom tuned so beautifully that I am sure it's unique in the world.

The same applies to an old BMW car that was custom-tuned to perfectly mimic the one from Need For Speed: Most Wanted. Yes, I'm pointing this towards the gamers, especially. 😁

Another brand of cars that is quite common in Romania as well is Audi. Obviously not an Audi RS7 or TT, but still Audi.

Happily, I could see some of the rarer models present in the UpsideDown Festival where, again, the owners did a great job making their vehicles take a step away from the common models.

But along with the Mercedes and Audi, BMW gets the podium when it comes to the most common car you will see down the streets of Romania.

Whether it's a classic or retro BMW or a more modern one like an M3, M4 or even an i8, this brand of cars is never missing in the traffic, nor at the car events. And thanks God, there were plenty of models to catch one's attention during the UpsideDown Festival.

What I can call my guilty pleasure from this edition of UpsideDown Festival is, a Porsche with a full wrap of Deadpool.

Funny thing is that I love Porsche as a brand of cars, but would never see myself driving one. I mean, if I had the money to get one, I would, perhaps, get a different brand of car. What I loved about this one, though, was the wrapping, which seemed like the most animated one, and as a fan of Deadpool, I literally fell for this one.

When it comes to my boyfriend's all-time favourite ca,r though, it's the Nissan G,TR which we've been chasing for a couple of years in all Sibiu's events of cars but only managed to get to see it in real life at UpsideDown Festival.

Yet a car that will never get old, and which is perhaps amongst the most powerful ones from this year's car events.

Since we've made it to the section of powerful cars, Lambos or Ferraris couldn't be missing, isn't it?

Not sure if it's a good thing or not, but attending car festivals and events brings lots of Lambos and Ferraris amongst the participants, so they didn't really impress me too much, but they surely are some masterpieces on four wheels that many people only dream of driving one.

A car that I'd love to drive one day, though, and which is not even that expensive to get, is a VW Scirocco. Two models were also present during the festival, and I absolutely loved how the owners put their own touch on.

A few more brands of cars that took part in the festival, although I couldn't spot any other models of the same brands, were a Renault, Jaguar, Lexus, Alfa Romeo and Subaru.

Nevertheless, each of them tells its own story, and they are absolutely amazing brands of cars. Still, I'd love to see a Corvette Stingray one day as well, no matter if it's the single one as part of a festival or not.

Another car that caught my attention was part of a smart ad that was going to promote a movie that will be in the cinema soon and which is filmed in Romania, where the car of the main actor ran into an accident, and the exact same car was displayed as an ad within the festival.

Another delight to my eyes was also the cars with their hood up that would let the people see some of the parts.

Although I don't know much about car parts in general, I loved the little Seat that on the outside didn't seem like sharing a big story, but once the hood was raised, you could see plenty of stickers and colours. Such a beauty!

Along with the dozens of cars, there were also plenty of stalls with car parts, custom-tuned pieces, various car models in miniature, but also drink and food trucks.

The event took place on 31st May and 1st June. You could either get a ticket for both days or a one-day ticket for Sunday.

The one for both days was 30 RON / 6 EUR and the one for Sunday was 20 RON / 4 EUR, both tickets allowing you to enter and exit the festival as many times as you wish, without needing to pay for the ticket again when you return.

There are very few events and festivals I attend in town that require a visiting ticket, but I absolutely loved this experience, and it's what I call well-spent money. The banner promoting this festival mentioned there would be over 200 cars in the event, but I can say that there were very few over 100. In fact, the parking lot where the event took place has only 136 slots, and some of them were occupied by stalls as well. But even so, I loved the experience, and I still feel like the money spent was worth it.

^{Gabriela Travels is the FOUNDER of "Festival Mania" who started this community from the passion of attending various festivals and with the purpose of encouraging more people to explore festivals all around the world and share their experiences.
At the same time, Gabriela is an independent Graphic Design Freelancer since 2019 completing over 600+ orders in this time and collaborating with various businesses and people from all over the globe.
Additionally, Gabriela has her own corner on the internet since 2017 where she writes various articles for her blog, the most popular being the travel ones (300+ articles written on this field), but also approaching other topics as well, like game reviews, lets plays, movie and series reviews, photography posts, cooking recipes and more, boosting the total number of articles written to 750+ blog posts.
Gabriela is also a gamer since she was 11 years old and gaming remains one of her biggest passions along with traveling, owning a YouTube channel for each of the two.}