Thread: What do you look for in a Car Show?

Tweet

My church has had car shows for the past 6 years as our fundraiser for mission work and they keep growing each year. We have ours in August from 5-8 and the ladies love it because it is only 3 hours long. Our show is for cars, trucks, motorcycles and tractors, basically anything with wheels and an engine. We do not charge for entries and we get more vehicles because of that. We provide food for a donation and a silent auction with items from various businesses from auto stores, restaurants, local race track, and so on. We even have a cake walk and charge $1 and you stay in until you win or we run out of cakes. We used to have a dunk tank but have rented those inflatables for the past two years and the younger kids love it. As far as trophies go, we have People's Choice (1st and 2nd), Pastor's Choice and Greatest Potential for all those projects. This past August, we raised a little over $2,000 after all expenses were paid and I should probably add that most of our expenses are donated.

I think any school related fund raiser will do well. One thing I would be very careful of is those shade tents. If this is held in a parking lot, how will you tie them down? I once saw a tent blow over and hit several show cars, causing thousands of $$ in damage. Also, any type of activity, like a piston toss or whatever should be done early so as not to hold up the awards. If you want this to be an annual event, don't drag it out and bore the people.
Most of the local shows here are going to a top 25 or top 50 depending on the size of the show. But if you class the cars, you need to park the classes together. Judges will get lazy and confused if thet have to "hunt" for cars.
Most of all, make it fun.

I lived in Wisconsin for 6 months a couple years ago and there was a tractor show at the local Fire Dept yard. I hadn't spent any time much with tractors, but when I got there, those darned things really got my attention. I think they had maybe 20 tractors of all types displayed and I spent several hours looking them over and talking to the owners about them. My point is, don't disallow anything that has tires on it. Also, if I were putting on a show, I would have a place for "works in progress" that would be allowed to sit on a trailer.

Don said have hours of 9 to 1. I disagree with this, because I remember when I was a young man and had to work every Saturday until 1:00 PM. It used to make me very unhappy that events closed at 1:00 and I wouldn't get to attend. If you want to shorten it up to less than 8 hours, at least run it from 9:00 AM to 3:00 PM so everybody has a chance to make it to the show.

As far as grouping the cars, I like to see all the individual marques together. All the Fords together, all the Chevys together, etc. That way, if I'm not interested in looking at Cadillacs, I don't have to wade through them to get to the Hupmobiles.

I also might be thinking about having 3 or 4 gnarly dudes in the background with night sticks to handle any problems that might arise. Better safe than sorry.