Planning a Car Show....Advice?

I'm the main guy for planning a car show for our church. I'm hoping to have the show in mid-March to be one of the first, if not the first, shows in Metro Atlanta. That time of year is not too bad in North Georgia. I am planning on a judged show, with, hopefully, about 21 trophies to give out. I hope to have at least 12 classes with a best of class trophy to each, a best of show trophy, a best restoration trophy, a best rod trophy, a best potential trophy, a best junker trophy, and the Pastor's trophy (this trophy will simply go to the car the pastor likes best). I am hoping the vast number of car clubs in metro Atlanta can provide qualified judges.

Our church property can probably hold 200+ show cars. Our youth group will man refreshment stands and the boy scout troop we host, will serve as guides, parking guides and attendents, and overall helpers. Since the proceeds of the show are going to the youth ministries and the boy scout troop, It's nice they will be major help for the show.

Local businesses will hopefully come through and donate gift certificates as door prizes and we will we have a big door prize for show participants. I can't divulge what it will be yet, but a big parts company may come up with a BIG certificate.

I am looking for advice. Primarily, I am looking for pitfalls and things that have worked very well from your experiences with shows. If you are qualified to be a show judge and would consider to coming to Atlanta, I'd love to hear from you.

Be on the lookout for a website about the show and a listing in Hemmings and other periodicals about the show. Thanks.

 

I two have been interesed in setting up a car show, with the exception I wouldn't have the a church back it up as I am not religous. But it sounds like you have the workings of a good show in the make. When I've been thinking of the one I'd start I thought having a detailers showing up at the event too, and perhaps doing demos to premote themselves. You know bring in a crappy paint job car, polish out some scrathes, make dull paint shine, ect. So they might be other people you could invite as well. The one I've been thinking of would be a largely indoor event, as we have some good facilties that would be perfect. Local car dealerships are a great place to start getting promtional stuff with as well as body shops ... ect. I even thought about getting a small local band to play a few songs, most people like live music. In your case you could even go with a christian rock group or something along those lines. Many muscians can also play a few older songs that might go with the old car theme of the car show.

Good luck with the show, let me know how it goes, I'd like to here from you, If you'd like any more advice/ideas feel free to "pick" my brain.

 

my $.02. make sure there are restrooms available for everyone (outside of the ones in the church) You'll need 'em! Good Luck. Russ

 

The only real advice I can give you is DON`T take your canopy tent because you are going to be on church property ...and you KNOW that thing cant be assembled without someone doing a little cursing! LOL!

p.s. I assume there will be a Funnel Cake booth at the show ?

 

Use judges that are not associated with your church for sure. There is always someone who feels "cheated" after the judging , that is inevitable. The experienced car show guys always take defeat in stride and just enjoy being there and having a good time. So I would definitely concentrate on the "good time" part. If you can, get judges from out of town. That usually eliminates any local bias.

Having the judges meeting at dinner the night before or breakfast before the show is a great way to get aquainted, go over rules and reward the judges for their efforts. Consistent judging is the key. I like to Judge in pairs for best results.

Get BIG trophies at least for peoples choice and Best of Show and set them right up front. People love that stuff. It sound like you got things pretty well under control. I wish you the best of luck. Take lots of pics.

 

LOL!!!! Boy, that canopy I had at the mini-meet is not going to be forgotten, is it?

Mike, I have bought an EZ-Up Canopy. It's 10x10 and one person can put it up. It's better for two, but no more than two have to put it up.

I hadn't thought about a funnel cake booth...until now.

 

Good idea and already considered. We have a full size gym right next to the grassy area where the show will be. We will have it opened for rest room access and have tables & chairs set up for folks to sit down to eat hot dogs and hamburgers. I think we have a great physical location for a show.

 

My advice is as follows. If you plan to have 12 classes and you want this car show to be an annual event, then have at least 3 plaques/trophies per class. 1 award per class will get more people bickering at you than you can imagine, been there, done that. By all means, use a judging system, keep it simple and put teams out in pairs, that way one guy cannot be at fault for incorrectly judging a car in the owners eyes. Have registration done by noon, then start judging immediately, have all cars judged by 1:30. Get your ducks in order for trophy presentation by 2:30, everybody is gone by 3:00. Too many shows going till 4 and 5:00. As far as classes go,, that is a big decision on your part, find out what other successful shows are doing for classes. If you have only one street machine class, then you are in trouble, do at least 2 and maybe 3 classes broken out by year. You would be surprised at how many cars are actually street machines out there. Basically every restomod Mav/Com is a street machine. Also, get a radio station involved, they can promote it for you and possibly do a live remote from the show.
Dan

 

Thanks Dan. Very good points.

 

Terry; is there a posibility of a Ga. mini-meet for the MCCI or the local Mav/Com folks, and do you think your former friend Frank would attend? Also, try to get some dash plaques made up for the registered participants, and a few to sell to the crowd. Let me know.

 

My first suggestion would be to do away with this class

I don't think I need to explain why.
I'm not sure what you mean by this class

I hope you mean by a car that is in good original shape that has not been touched. You might want to change the name of the class to Original/Unrestored Class. With 12 classes you are a little shy on plaques/trophys. If you do 3 places per class then you need at least 36 of them and then your Best of Trophys. Even if you only do 2 places per class, then you need 24 plaques/trophys and then Best of Trophys. This will be a little hard to explain here on the board and it may come out wrong. But the class trophys should be given out and then the Best of Trophys and that means some of the same people will get 2 trophys for the same car. The reason is if someone gets a best of trophy and is not eligible for a class trophy. Then how can the person that gets a first place class trophy in his class, say he got first place when someone else got the Best of Trophy for something else. And deffinatly make it a judged SHOw. As particapant judging is way to biased.
Thanks for listening.

 

Last year, I set up our Pa meet as a charity event that benefitted the Lupus Foundation of PA. It was a big task, even with the help of the Foundation.

Pitfalls are many. Rounding up people who are willing to donate prizes or gift certificates is increasingly difficult. All merchants get swamped with requests for donations every year with the amount of requests increasing. Many won't give at all because if it is found out that they did, more will be beating down their doors. You have no idea how many busineses outright blew me off even though I had a letter verifying my affiliation with a major charitable medical foundation. And promises of this and that sometimes get forgotten when it's time to put up. It gets frustrating and wastes a LOT of time.

Scheduling the meet around all the other events that go on is a hard task , but extremely important. We have a lot of car events in this area every year. Our event ended up going on around two other events that had been rained out the previous week which weren't originally going to be a problem and it hurt our attendance badly. Big pitfall.

If you don't advertise the crap out of it and early, attendance will falter. Aside from handing out fliers at car cruises and posting them around town, you need to be a good salesman to get help from local media. You need to get started several months before on the advertising thing and keep up on it up until the date.

Bottom line is that you have to be willing to make a committment of time and aggrivation to set up a car event. I don't care what anyone else any have told you, it's not easy by any means and ther'll be times that you wonder why you even started. It's common place for the helpers that have told you that they'll be there to help to disappear when things need done. Joy and I ended up doing virtually everything ourselves and we started almost a year in advance.

I know that I haven't sent you sunshine, but I'm just telling you what our experiences were and I've talked to others who set up events for their respective clubs in the past and the stories are similar. Now, I'm not saying not to go ahead, but you need to do your research on the calendar and get FIRM committments from helpers and hold them to it. Be prepared to spend a lot of time getting things in order. If there's anything I can do for you, just drop me an e-mail and we'll talk.

 

terry,
all i can say is " GOOD LUCK" .
in most all shows i have been in the #1 b&$#h is placing the cars in the class they go in. 12 classes will not make 13 car owners happy . someone will be put in a class he/she thinks is the wrong one. if you don't have a written set of guidelines to show them why they are there they will think "you" are putting them there so one of your friends can "win".
the last show chris and i went to the people's pick was an 04' truck. it also took first place in the truck "class". no one was happy. the guy just bought the truck two days before the show. the truck next to it was a sharp mid 70's that had been worked from one end to the other.
if you need a car to draw a bunch of folks , let me know. i know a guy that has an orange mav. that could do that for you.
your friend and pal...frank...

 

Thanks to everyone. Your input has been more valuable than you know.

Earl, what do you think about the GA chapter of MCCI being the judges of the show? Call me.

 

Earl, what do you think about the GA chapter of MCCI being the judges of the show? Call me.
...i like that idea... ...frank...