People At Car Shows

I remember first going to the car shows ... all the guys were young and single. Lots of attractive single gals there too! Now ... it's the same guys ... older and grayer with only a few trophy wife's scattered here and there! :-)

That's interesting Norm as I was wondering how the scene over there was these days especially given my own experiences in the UK.

I drifted (no pun intended) away from the hot rod scene in the Nineties when I stopped organising my own events. With no car and no show to promote I guess I felt a little out of place. Anyway, in 2008 I heard that what had been one of the premier events in the UK, the Doncaster Custom Motor Show, was being revived so I went along as a spectator.

Donnie as it was fondly called by those in the hobby really was one of the top shows and had been an institution almost in the Seventies and Eighties. Guys would beaver away all year to make sure their latest project was ready to debut at that particular show.

So, what did I find in 2008, well it was a bit like you've described. The standard of cars was amazing, probably even higher than back in the day. However, there was no buzz about the place. There were far fewer cars and the drop in visitor numbers was even more noticeable. Even more troubling was the absence of young people, nearly all the exhibitors I saw were at least middle-aged and many were the same guys that used to go along.

It really struck me hard and it made me wonder what had gone wrong with the UK scene, why was there such an absence of youth? To be honest I don't know the answer and I might be doing the UK scene an injustice as I've not been to any custom shows or rod runs since. However, I have an awful feeling that if I did go to one this week I'd make the same observations.

Yet when you go to say the VW shows the balance is the other way around, the vast majority of the guys building the top cars are young. However, even there you find things aren't as good as it may first appear. Because for all the high standard of workmanship you'll find an awful lot of them are just so similar in their approach and worse still they tend to be dominated by one vehicle, the Golf.

Now don't get me wrong I love the Golf, but let's have some diversity and individuality. At least when you went to the shows of old you'd find almost endless diversity in the make/model of car on show.

Oh dear, sounds like I'm turning into a boring old fart who bangs on about how things were different back in the day! :(

They use to hold the Street Machine Nationals here in Indy and I would go to that. It was the show to go to! Wild burnouts and the cruising at night got the show kicked out of Indy though. It was fun times while it lasted. I was never one to put my own cars in the shows, but I liked going to them and seeing what others were doing. Two of my buddies had 1969 GTOs and they showed them and I'd usually meet up with them.

www.ipernity.com/doc/indycaver/17035481

I think the traditional cars are too expensive for the young people to buy and most young people go to the import shows ... which I don't. There's something about a huge chrome muffler that just turns me off! :-)

cola??...not beer ???