Essen Motor Show 2025

Messe Essen, Germany, 4th December 2025: In December, there is one place you need to be as a petrolhead, and that is in Essen. It is the performance festival of Eastern Europe and one of the best tuning experiences. Of course, we are talking about the Essen Motor Show. For ten days (including the preview night), Messe Essen was a car sanctuary, where not only visitors could see highly modified cars, but also get information on parts and how to tune their cars legally. Around 500 exhibitors from 16 countries transformed all nine halls at Messe Essen into a festival for performance & racing, tuning & lifestyle, Motorsport, and classic cars.

Text: Benjamin Wefer,
Pictures: Benjamin Wefer,
Video: Willem van Lamoen

Each Hall had its own theme. Halls one and two were the place to be for classic cars, Hall three for Performance & Racing, and Hall four for the show area, with some live demos and stunts. As in previous years, Halls 5, 6, and 7 were the place to be for the tuning lifestyle: Tuning Experience. Motorsport in Hall 8, and the Gallery was the place to be for all your precious accessories.

The Tuning Experience attracts the most visitors to Messe Essen, featuring around 150 highly modified vehicles from 16 nations, sure to raise the heart rate of any car enthusiast. It’s where you can get a glimpse of Europe’s finest built, from classic cars to electric, not to forget the latest models either.

But let’s start with a recap of last year’s Tuning Experience Halls. One of the jewels exhibited in 2024 was the C8 Chevrolet Corvette owned by Cenk Akyildiz, the first C8 in Europe with a Liberty Walk body kit. This C8 truly reflects elegance and liveliness, making it a perfect fit for what the Essen Motor Show represents. Therefore, the EMS organisation chose Akyildiz Car to be the 2025 face of the Essen Motor Show, and it was a wise choice. It is also the second time EMS has selected a car from the previous exhibition to be the face of the following year’s edition. Let’s zoom in a little on this year’s Tuning Experience Halls and go for some of the jewels exhibited, as there are too many to mention.

One car that caught the crowd’s attention was the Ford Mustang “Hellenor” by Mean Machine Garage (MMG) in Prague. MMG specializes in importing, restoring, and maintaining American Muscle cars. The Legendary 1967 Shelby GT500 “Eleanor,” inspired the team from MMG to create their unique tribute to the Mustang built by Chip Foose in the film Gone in Sixty Seconds. Hellenor is brutally customized and tuned. It has a Ford Windsor 428, built by Nelson Racing Engines. It is a 7-liter twin-turbo (Turbo boost at 15 psi) V8 producing around 1200 horsepower on regular fuel and a stunning 1700 horsepower on racing fuel. It’s painted in a beautiful Candy Organic Green, finished with a brown interior. It took three years and over 5500 hours to complete.

Another engineering masterpiece exhibited in the Tuning Experience halls was the VW Beetle with a 612 hp Tesla motor and the tuned VW T2 minibus with 300 hp.

Hall 3 was all about performance and racing, and one car that for sure attracted attention was the Maybach Exelero. The Exelero is not a production car, but a one-off concept car for testing high-speed tires from German tyre manufacturer Fulda. The car was revealed in 2005 and has a bi-turbo V12 engine, producing around 700 horsepower. Exelero has a top speed of 351 km/hrs. This car isn’t exhibited here in Europe very often, so it’s a stunning car to see.

Hall 8 was for the Motorsport teams, from karting to rally to drag racing. There was something from every division of Motorsport. Representing the Drag Racing community has been Gerd Habermann Racing, a tradition for the Ravenol stand. Also this year, Gerd was very successful, winning several European Supercomp and/or Pro E.T. championships. He brought a dragster with a history in Scandinavian racing, as Tina Christensen had previously owned it.

At EMS, one can purchase or get information on several car parts or tuners. Several German tuners were part of the 500 exhibitors. Names like Daniels All Car Tuning, Grail Exhaust, Raffa Wheels, and Wheel World all had stands at EMS.

One team present in Hall 7 was Tune it Safe. It’s an initiative supported by the German Association of Automobile Tuners, aimed at informing people about how to modify their vehicles in accordance with German regulations. Their goal is to eliminate illegal and unsafe car modifications. Every year, they bring a highly modified car in a police wrap to show the spectators how far you can tune your car without breaking any laws. This year, it was Steeda that exhibited its Q500 Enforcer Mustang. The Q500 has a 5.0-liter naturally aspirated Ford Coyote engine and more than 400 horsepower. Not only did the engine get an upgrade, but the suspension and drivetrain did too, and it is still entirely legal!

The Essen Motor Show is still open till this Sunday. If you’re not able to visit, make sure you reserve 28th November to 6th December 2026 in your calendar for edition 58 of the Essen Motor Show! Enjoy the photo gallery!