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History / OriginalityGot a question about 1982-1992 Camaro or Firebird history? Have a question about original parts, options, RPO codes, when something was available, or how to document your car? Those questions, answers, and much more!
It could just be that I suffer from some kind of Third Gen Derangement Syndrome, and of course, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. But to my eye, this is a very cool-looking 30 year-old car that represents American muscle, be it in stock 240 HP trim or in [souped up] 550 HP configuration.
The reason I bring this up is because in my area, this car is precluded from participating in most car shows...because it's too new. The "cut-off" is 1979. This makes very little sense for a variety of reasons:
- 10 years ago, the cut-off was 1979. 20 years ago, the cut-off was 1979.
- It's almost an objective truth that there are better and more interesting cars produced in the mid-late eighties than were produced in the mid-late seventies.
- What's the difference between a 1979 Corvette, Camaro, Firebird, or Mustang, and a 1980 or '81?
So, while this definitely stinks of ill-informed and intolerant gray-bearded A-holes imposing their wrong-headed belief that "hot-rodding died with the advent of electronic fuel injection", it stinks of something else too. Given the fact that they've surely caught on to the popularity of electronic fuel injection, TPI, LT, LS, and other fuel injected engines retrofitted into all sorts of what they deem to be "classic" cars; and given the fact that they somehow don't seem to mind the occasional late model Mustang or Challenger on the field (you know, the ones that were built in the 2000s, but were made to look like they were built in the '60s-'70s). It has for a long time seemed to me that there is a certain contempt for cars of the 1980s in particular, and the 1990s to a softer extent.
I love the muscle cars of the 1960s and 1970s. I love the cars of the 1950s too. I'm not knocking those cars. What I find tiresome (besides playing only '50s rock (which I do like) at these events, is how or why they feel that they have room for the same 150 people with the same 150 cars; they seem to want nothing more than a sea of mostly rectangle-shaped icons with one more or less the same as the next; they are abhorrent about breaking up that monotony with something that makes a slightly different visual statement; they have room for 85 of the exact same 1965 Mustang, but no room for us; no room for a car like mine.
I realize that by posting this here, I'm preaching to the choir. I'm simply getting the word out. We should probably all get the word out especially if you're finding yourself in a similar situation.
That is part of the reason I stopped going to car shows. They were all the same people with the same cars and they are all mostly stock, or all chromed out small blocks under the hood. I have seen that ad nauseam, it's old, I want to see people doing innovative stuff with their cars. I know a lot of people think LS swaps are "played out" but in reality SBC and BBC engines are played out big time, there is very little innovation coming into that scene. No one with carburetors is really doing anything different than they did 35+ years ago, it is literally the same old and stock is boring too.
To me it should be a rolling 25 years or so, as a friend said to me. That would make it more interesting.
I got screwed with a similar rule in the Optima series racing. My car is a 92 and they cut off 1990 as the vintage year split but they wouldn't let me race in vintage. I told them my car is functionally the same as the 90 no ABS as this is the arbitrary year they chose because of ABS. I told them they should amend the rule so that if the model car is functionally the same as the cars before the cut off it should still be allowed. A few people chimed in that I should have just said the car was a 90. They wanted me to write a letter stating as such, well if you're not going to take my suggestion to heart verbally, I am not going to waste my time writing a letter, you people make the rules, just change it for next year, it's not like my 92 has any advantage over a 90.
Ironically, I am turning into a gray beard, lol, It's starting to come in and I am only 39, but I have also been called an old man because I go to bed early and don't do anything "fun" anymore
My beard would be white.... it's a genetic thing, but genes notwithstanding, it'd be at least gray....I don't know what kind of car shows you have there, but a car show is a car show, so why are there even restrictions? As long as it is a car (or truck). Puzzles me, unless yer trying to compete some how, then there could be rules. This is the choir, you're right, we can have our own show....
The reason I bring this up is because in my area, this car is precluded from participating in most car shows...because it's too new. The "cut-off" is 1979. This makes very little sense for a variety of reasons:
This is why there is a current movement to the Cars & Coffee format or cruise ins. I too am tired of car shows with the same cars, 50's music blaring, with the same folks and same cars. It is the exact same format I remember from 1995.
I like seeing different and interesting stuff. Come an go as you please. It is much more fun to me.
This is why there is a current movement to the Cars & Coffee format or cruise ins. I too am tired of car shows with the same cars, 50's music blaring, with the same folks and same cars. It is the exact same format I remember from 1995.
I like seeing different and interesting stuff. Come an go as you please. It is much more fun to me.
I have gotten more and more into cruise-ins the last couple years because of these same reasons. I still go to some shows that are respective to all generations, but the oldies type carshows same old 50s junk-NO. I have no desire for any more trophys I simply don't care or have room so cruise-ins are better for me and you get to see anything you can think of. BTW- I have a very gray beard also.
I've also never quite understood why at car shows it cost to enter your car into the show but its free to attend... I don't have a need to have my car judged... so why would I pay to have it judged... seems it would be more profitable to have a gate fee for everyone and let anyone enter their car that is say 25 years old or more than 50% not stock.
Airshows have the same issue, they are the same music, same food, same shows as they were in the 90's and they worry their attendance is trailing off....
I think the last car show I went to was in 99-00... and actually met up with some people from here at the gas station on North Avenue in Atlanta... don't recall their names. which now to think about it I've had my account longer than it says on the left.
I'm 72, have a gray beard, am ill informed, kind of intolerant, sometimes a A-hole so should be able to answer the question but have forgotten what the question was, sorry.
I have noticed relaxation of the "1972 and earlier"rule lately-a couple of the "big"events raised the cutoff to 1987 .Grays generally hate thirdgens in my experience-they perk up when they hear I have a z28,then grimace and change the subject when I say it is an '82 Look at what happens when you drive a third past a schoolyard or beside a school bus though. I remember going to a car show about 1978 and there where a couple geezers sitting by some model A Fords complaining about a ~1965 GTO saying it just a "greasy kid car".Linsons original post says it all quite well
Many shows follow the Good Guys lead on this. A year or so back, they moved up from 1979 to 1987. At least one other local major show has followed this lead, and made the Sunday of their 3 days show open to all model years.
Still not allowing as new of a car as I'd like, but at least it's a good compromise as far as it goes.
Still go to shows and cruise ins with the family. Think its good to expose the kiddos to fun of it all. I don't worry about getting judged or anything so I pay to enter to help support the effort but we don't go for the plastic dust collectors.
i laugh when i hear about "too many ls swaps" i usually respond with "cheap ,reliable,attainable horsepower is hard to turn down "
well that and "you understand there are millions of regular sbs'c so in truthful comparison there are very few ls swaps"
i absolutely have no problem with a clean,well executed LS swap.it saves weight,adds horsepower,parts are plentiful
and the potential for massive power is always the spin of a wrench away.
I 100% agree and have witnessed this time and time again. In my area all the guys that run the shows own 60s and 70s muscle cars and hot rods. I’ve seen dirty cars with amateur paint imperfections win trophies because of the era they are from. Sometimes a car will win 2 or 3 trophies in a night because it’s a 57 Bel Air. I also catch those gray beards talking crap about thirdgens when my IROC draws a crowd. I like to be within earshot and hear what people say. A lot of the general public and the younger people there are more interested in thirdgens, Grand Nationals TTAs, etc and I think the gray beards think this is annoying and those people are wrong because they must know nothing about cars. I like to see more variety of cars. I like to check out Porsche 944s, Gen 1 Supras, even Fox Mustangs that are impressively nice. I can even get down with the Saab tuner guys and the Volvo wagon show cars that have small blocks in them...
I agree with KyleF... The Cars and Coffee scene is blowing up... The Seacoast Cars and Coffee event in New Hampshire is starting to draw up to 2000 cars. There’s exotics, muscle cars, 80s cars, trucks, keeps, low riders, VW bugs, Porsche, Deloreans, and any weird car you forgot about or crazy build you could dream of. These guys motto is “if it rolls and you love it, bring it”. They walk around and take photos and videos and do little interviews with car owners and have opened a cafe and made a business out of this Cars and Coffee. You can see with the popularity of these events how car showing could be if they opened it up.
i have called some car show organizers to make sure I can bring my car and I have gotten attitude about how “well we mostly just do the 50s, 60s and 70s and hotrods but you can bring it..
I have reminded them that the term “classic” car begins 1994 and under and there’s a lot of cool, rare cars that draw a crowd from these model years. Many are more original than these restored muscle cars and the owners that have taken care of these cars sometimes as the original owner for 25-35 years!
I have gone to big car shows like one in Newburyport where they shut the town down and museum cars are trailered in as well as cars “invited” by the show organizers. I am a car guy, but I can only look at so many rows of 1st gen Camaros and Chevelles before I’d like to see at least a Grand National or something! I couldn’t help but think of how seeing an IROC, TTA or concourse Formula 350 at that show would be such a breath of fresh air...
I think the gray beards are missing out on keeping car culture alive. I think they are turning away people who would become more interested in their cars. I think the Cars and Coffee scene is the future. They can keep giving themselves their little trophies at their little shows.
There’s a guy with an 1100 hp Hellcat and a couple of modded insane Lambos.. The brake lights on the Hellcat say “You’d Lose” when you hit the brakes and the side mirror on his Aventador says “Objects in Mirror are Losing”... Super cool guy with a good sense of humor and he started a car club to combat the snobbery...
“I have been to more car related events than humanly possible " enough for 10 lifetimes". I have met some of my best friends at car events. I have also been snubbed, looked and talked-down to and many other things because I may not have been driving a car that fit everyone's mold or idea of what a car should be.
Fast forward in time those people that once did all those things line up to see the cars I build and own. Funny how things change with time, success and money. I vowed early on that I would never be that guy. The one who felt he was to cool or to good who to take 5 seconds out of his precious day to speak or show someone his car. The best part of my day is letting someone take a picture of my car or get a picture inside my car. I am never to busy to answer a question or share my passion for cars.
This car club is my escape, my therapy and sanity. My goal is for everyone involved to feel the same. So I surround myself with like minded people who share that passion and the love of cars. I don't care if u drive a geo metro "no offense metro owners" or a Bugatti. We are all equals here and we don't judge on the car you drive. Its about a family that doesn't discriminate on race, gender, social status, the car you drive or anything else. This is a new age of car clubs one that can do great things, one that brings people together in a very divided world. One that gives and doesn't take. One that raises money for its community, charity's and its own when needed. The right person can promote change the right group can change the world!
The love of cars transcends almost every barrier in life language, religion its bigger than all of it and all of us. My goal it to see RIDE OR DIE RACING on a car in every country and bring us together and promote change.. its time!!!“
uh, I think maybe us poor old graybeards are taking some heat here for a lot of the gold chain group.most of my friends are car guys and old, like all kinds of cars.. we grew up in an era when cruise night was just plain old Friday and Saturday night. the drive ins were filled with all kinds of cars from 30s to 60s (i'm talking mid 60s so 3rd gens didn't exist). people drove what they could get their hands on, maybe it was Mom and Dads 4 door 56 Nash but everybody was welcome. A lot of the car shows are make or type or era specific now. I think maybe some of those people you are calling graybeards are whippersnappers to us real graybeards.(72 and first time I've ever been able to use that term in a sentence)
i haven't been to a car show in a long time mainly because i've been working on my build for 5 years now. i used to go quite a bit though. luckily most shows near me didn't have a cut off year for entries.
truth be told - i never really cared much for the other cars. like others have said, it was usually all the same people and cars at these things. every once in a while you'd see something new or innovative. i really just attended because it was an excuse to get out of the house and hang out with friends for half a day.
when i first met my wife, i used to go to car shows 2-3 times a month in the summer. after awhile she started giving me grief about how many shows i'd go to. i always invited her, but she wouldn't go. finally one day she came with me to a show. it was the typical sitting around, talking, walking through the cars, eating lunch, etc... on the way home she asked me if that's all we do at shows. i said yeah - what did you think a car show was?? i think she thought it was gonna be all hot chicks and wet t-shirt contests or something.
I don't generally do car shows unless it's with KITT and I tell them the car is exhibition only, do not judge. I do mostly cruise-ins with all 3 cars. We have one every weekend in a different place here from April to October. Don't care about trophies. I have 123 from various cars over the years and no place to put them! Around here, all cars are pretty much accepted at all of the shows. Most of the shows/cruise-ins around here are playing 60s-80s music now. There's only a couple still playing non-stop 50s. One of them is just set in their ways, playing 50s music. They use a CD changer.lol We've come so close to walking up there while they are not looking and throw an 80s King Diamond CD in there just to see what would happen.lol
I realize that by posting this here, I'm preaching to the choir. I'm simply getting the word out. We should probably all get the word out especially if you're finding yourself in a similar situation.
Check our RADwood - 80s/90s car show. I won the "Raddest Future Collectible" award (Barrett Jackson chose the car) with my Formula 350 last December in LA. I was parked next to a Subaru SVX and a 911. The row over had 3 Countashes (black, white, and red)...
I 100% agree and have witnessed this time and time again. In my area all the guys that run the shows own 60s and 70s muscle cars and hot rods. I’ve seen dirty cars with amateur paint imperfections win trophies because of the era they are from. Sometimes a car will win 2 or 3 trophies in a night because it’s a 57 Bel Air. I also catch those gray beards talking crap about thirdgens when my IROC draws a crowd. I like to be within earshot and hear what people say. A lot of the general public and the younger people there are more interested in thirdgens, Grand Nationals TTAs, etc and I think the gray beards think this is annoying and those people are wrong because they must know nothing about cars. I like to see more variety of cars. I like to check out Porsche 944s, Gen 1 Supras, even Fox Mustangs that are impressively nice. I can even get down with the Saab tuner guys and the Volvo wagon show cars that have small blocks in them...
I agree with KyleF... The Cars and Coffee scene is blowing up... The Seacoast Cars and Coffee event in New Hampshire is starting to draw up to 2000 cars. There’s exotics, muscle cars, 80s cars, trucks, keeps, low riders, VW bugs, Porsche, Deloreans, and any weird car you forgot about or crazy build you could dream of. These guys motto is “if it rolls and you love it, bring it”. They walk around and take photos and videos and do little interviews with car owners and have opened a cafe and made a business out of this Cars and Coffee. You can see with the popularity of these events how car showing could be if they opened it up.
i have called some car show organizers to make sure I can bring my car and I have gotten attitude about how “well we mostly just do the 50s, 60s and 70s and hotrods but you can bring it..
I have reminded them that the term “classic” car begins 1994 and under and there’s a lot of cool, rare cars that draw a crowd from these model years. Many are more original than these restored muscle cars and the owners that have taken care of these cars sometimes as the original owner for 25-35 years!
I have gone to big car shows like one in Newburyport where they shut the town down and museum cars are trailered in as well as cars “invited” by the show organizers. I am a car guy, but I can only look at so many rows of 1st gen Camaros and Chevelles before I’d like to see at least a Grand National or something! I couldn’t help but think of how seeing an IROC, TTA or concourse Formula 350 at that show would be such a breath of fresh air...
I think the gray beards are missing out on keeping car culture alive. I think they are turning away people who would become more interested in their cars. I think the Cars and Coffee scene is the future. They can keep giving themselves their little trophies at their little shows.
There’s a guy with an 1100 hp Hellcat and a couple of modded insane Lambos.. The brake lights on the Hellcat say “You’d Lose” when you hit the brakes and the side mirror on his Aventador says “Objects in Mirror are Losing”... Super cool guy with a good sense of humor and he started a car club to combat the snobbery...
“I have been to more car related events than humanly possible " enough for 10 lifetimes". I have met some of my best friends at car events. I have also been snubbed, looked and talked-down to and many other things because I may not have been driving a car that fit everyone's mold or idea of what a car should be.
Fast forward in time those people that once did all those things line up to see the cars I build and own. Funny how things change with time, success and money. I vowed early on that I would never be that guy. The one who felt he was to cool or to good who to take 5 seconds out of his precious day to speak or show someone his car. The best part of my day is letting someone take a picture of my car or get a picture inside my car. I am never to busy to answer a question or share my passion for cars.
This car club is my escape, my therapy and sanity. My goal is for everyone involved to feel the same. So I surround myself with like minded people who share that passion and the love of cars. I don't care if u drive a geo metro "no offense metro owners" or a Bugatti. We are all equals here and we don't judge on the car you drive. Its about a family that doesn't discriminate on race, gender, social status, the car you drive or anything else. This is a new age of car clubs one that can do great things, one that brings people together in a very divided world. One that gives and doesn't take. One that raises money for its community, charity's and its own when needed. The right person can promote change the right group can change the world!
The love of cars transcends almost every barrier in life language, religion its bigger than all of it and all of us. My goal it to see RIDE OR DIE RACING on a car in every country and bring us together and promote change.. its time!!!“
I think you were a preacher in you prior life and I must have been the 1st to sign up for the congregation. Well said my friend!
C&C is the car show of today and I really think this is the model that will be followed moving forward, I really feel this is why those gray beards are "holding on" as they can see the future coming. That future is them being the minority now and they just don't like it.
BTW I don't have a beard just a stash and the pepper is quickly running out.
Guys are holding on to a bygone era. These cars are over 25 years old at this point and are considered antiques. Was supposed to go to a car show today just as a spectator and I found out it was pre 1972 and I won't go just on principle.
Many of the car shows have a cutoff date of 197x because of emissions. At least that's their stated reason.
I've somewhat changed my mind on car shows that have ten categories of cars before 197x or 198x and then an umbrella category for every car manufactured after 198x. I've observed that many shows do that because there just isn't enough attendance by those cars to warrant many categories. Any more I only go to shows with categories for every decade and even then their might be 5-10 cars in the 80's and 5ish for the 90s. So I think it's just a participation level thing. The people that have the time to just sit in a parking lot all day are the people that are retired and they usually own older cars.
The entry fee when lower is usually to cover the cost of the trophies, music/DJ, maybe the lot rental, porta-potty, the administrative costs, etc,. (car clubs, private individual)
When the entry fee is higher (>$20) it's usually because they are donating the proceeds to a charitable cause. (Car clubs, schools, not-for-profit foundations)
The for-profit car shows are usually put on by businesses like car dealers, performance shops, auto-parts stores, or paint shops. The for-profit shows are a wild card and the only shows that I would feel it to be justified to be upset about something. They are making money because you are there so they need to treat you as a customer.
Of the Car shows I've been to that have been totally open, if you'd have you put all the attendance on a chart it would probably look like a single sine wave. A ton of older cars at one end, a scant amount of mid-eighties to mid-2000s model cars and then a boat load of cars 0-5 years old. Just the way it is. Give it another ten years and you'll probably see the 1980s (and maybe 1990s) categories replace the 1920s, 30s and 40's categories.
Time changes everything. One thing I will say in favor of an old "pre-72" car show is that most of those guys do their own work. Nothing quite as disheartening to me as seeing a row of 10 new Camaros at C&C where guys are arguing over who has the better mechanic. Instead of bench racing, their bench shopping! I also used to lose my mind over a chance to see a real life Lambo in person. Now I see 15 every month at C&C. They're like 69 Camaros. I don't even look at 'em anymore. -and to be fair, the 69 Camaro Z28 is MY personal all time favorite....but unless it's done right....sigh....just another first gen.
BUT, all that aside, I do agree that C&C is the new standard. A lot of it has to do with Social Media. Normally I'd say how bad it is, but in this case I do think it's really brought the entire community together in a sense. There is SO much coverage of SO many cars, and so much CONTENT.....it's hard to ignore a brand or a genre of car. You really get a sense of what the "other guys" are doing. I know that when our car club, The Triad F-Body Club, was in full swing during the early 2000's, we all hated imports and Mustangs, as they made up the vast majority of the "competition". Now we didn't really hate 'em, but you know, in the way you hate a the Cowboys or Red Sox! But to be fair, we didn't really interact with them very much. Today, the majority of my hot-rodding buddies are NOT Chevy guys. The reality is most of us are all really good guys. Just normal people. And if something can somehow put you face to face with a shared interest, you typically will shake hands and start talking shop. I think C&C as well as social media does that.
Typically I think social media takes a bunch of similar people and point out how different they are, which only causes problems. In the case of a hobby though, like ours, it takes a bunch of different people and shows how similar we are. -I think C&C is a tangible example of that.
Don't worry; back in the early 80s, the people with tri-5 Chevys were FUMING over the exact same thing. The cutoff then for shows was usually "antique", which in most places, was/is a line drawn at 25 yrs. I remember well one particular organization that put on shows, changing from an age limit (25 yrs old) to a year cutoff (1954 or earlier), in 1980. People with actually OLD cars didn't want a half-million 55-6-7s polluting their shows, starting in 1980, and reaching an intolerable level in 1982. Which is to some extent understandable... the 57 Chevy was the ALL-TIME BEST-SELLING SINGLE CAR MODEL until the 65 Mustang came out. Letting those in unleashed A FLOOD that totally overwhelmed car shows, and does to this day. Having THAT MANY cars of that one type singlehandedly altered what car shows look like. They will never be the same.
Then of course in the early 90s the same attitude came up again to try to exclude late 60s muscle cars. But at least there weren't SO MANY of any one given kind, except Mustangs. Now of course, you go to a car show, it's about 40% 1st gen Camaro/Firebird, 45% Mustang, 10% tri-5, and 5% EVERYTHING ELSE. Very different from the days when the OLD part of the EVERYTHING ELSE was all there was.
It happens every generation.
Problem with these cars (and really, any cars from the early-mid 70s onward) is that the EXCITEMENT went out of the car business in about 1973. If you listen to 50s and 60s music there's songs about different models of cars (GTO, Mustang, Mercury, etc.); engines (409); racing; cruising; and so on. Hell, nowadays, if you consider the "young" car enthusiast crowd to be those into Hondas and such, there's not even any songs about drifting, or whose wing is gaudier, or whose muffler sounds more like a bumblebee farting; it's just not "mainstream" anymore like cars were before 1973. The overall cultural attitude was far more car-oriented then, than it became after the Arab oil embargo and the subsequent neutering of cars. The culture just sorta moved on and never really has returned. Never will. These cars, while arguably "better" in EVERY way than most of those older cars, had the misfortune of being born into a time that … they just didn't matter too much anymore. Nobody really cares to see C4s or later C3s, Mustang IIs, Dodge Aspens (hahaha), etc. in car shows either; for the same reason. Doesn't matter that THE CAR itself is better, worse, prettier, weirder, more or less fondly remembered for backseat virginity loss, or ANYTHING ELSE; cars AS A CULTURE just aren't … all that … anymore, starting in 1973.
Last edited by sofakingdom; Sep 2, 2019 at 05:55 PM.
I want everyone to understand that the term, "gray beard" while derogatory, isn't meant to target anyone's age or physical appearance. It is a derogatory term that targets a specific state of mind. That state of mind is that...
- Any car built after 1973 is trash
- There is something inherently "false" about any car with electronic fuel injection
- There is something inherently "false" about any car built after about 1973, Third Gen F-Bodies in particular.
I, for one, have noticed that these attitudes soften when it comes to very late model muscle cars, which, as it happens, stylistically impersonate the muscle cars of the late '60s & early '70s.
Personally, I don't think that our own segregated car scene is the best answer. For one thing, our cars, especially in presentable condition, are pretty damn rare - which adds to their appeal, in my opinion. Personally, I think that our Third Gens belong next to their predecessors at the same events.
It has been my experience that people, young and old alike, when they see my Formula, they realize for the first time that *they like Third Gens*. I'd like to see more of that catching on, but it is stifled by a "cut-off" date that seems to intentionally exclude our cars due to there perceived, inherent unworthyness to be seen as classic or collectible.
You need to stop hanging out with people that don't respect your car! Not saying your view of the situation is wrong, but you can't change other people. I'll talk to a cool guy in a soup'd up Honda any day over a jerk driving classic muscle. People will be who they are. As many have said, I think formal car shows are kinda phasing out. They're still around for the few people that are into that scene, but our thirdgens will never be their scene.
Everybody that sees my IROC likes it, can't go to the gas station without somebody stopping to talk about it or ask if it's for sale. Little kids love it. Car snobs aren't real car people.
Car shows suck. Bunch of people who's hobby it is.... get this.... literally, their hobby is to get people to pay attention to them. They park their cars and pretend to be something they're not. They'll get all upset over a cheap piece of shiny plastic. That right there is a recipe that just doesn't work for me.
I enjoy a cars and coffee now and then. Real people, real cars, real conversation.
Shows i go to that are publicly judged or judged by a panel of different age groups the car does really good. It always attracts crowds every show and I still hear the guys with the Chevelles and Belairs say derogatory things like it's a plastic piece of trash etc..That's ok, like I told my Dad- it's what I like.
Me personally, I love a good C&C or similar event. There are several within 30+ minutes for my location. Lots of variety and always something new each time you go. Aside from a charity show you probably won't ever see my car at another organized car show again.
I've had my fill of events like Auto Fair and the like because of the monotony of the same cars over and over again along with other recent changes that have occurred. I'm also growing tired of the car club scene as well.
Our local MacDonald s sponsors a cruise night every Friday. They also have judging. I go for the company of like minded people.
I see this teen walking around with a pad and a confused look on his face, asked him what he was doing and he said, Um Judgin.
There were some really nice cars there many to be proud of. When the prizes were announced, it went like this, "first place to the blue car, second place to the gray car and best of show to the black car"
You could hear the horns blaring in the next county.
I too am sick of the early 70's and only rule! My other beef w/ car shows.................CLOSE THE DAM HOODS! Can't enjoy the lines and style of the vehicle with the hoods open.
My other beef w/ car shows.................CLOSE THE DAM HOODS!
That’s one sure way to not get votes at the car show. The engine / engine bay is a major aspect of the judging criteria.
You could have the best looking car ever but if the engine bay is a rats nest of wires and isn’t detailed, it kills the car.
I too am sick of the early 70's and only rule! My other beef w/ car shows.................CLOSE THE DAM HOODS! Can't enjoy the lines and style of the vehicle with the hoods open.
The trend I see a many guys put their hood half way up.. I don’t know if it’s to show how good their hood shocks are or they just don’t want their engine to get too much sun.. Not sure the point of that..
I have gotten more and more into cruise-ins the last couple years because of these same reasons. I still go to some shows that are respective to all generations, but the oldies type carshows same old 50s junk-NO. I have no desire for any more trophys I simply don't care or have room so cruise-ins are better for me and you get to see anything you can think of. BTW- I have a very gray beard also. 
Look at what happens when you drive a third past a schoolyard or beside a school bus though.
Bunch of people who's hobby it is.... get this.... literally, their hobby is to get people to pay attention to them. They park their cars and pretend to be something they're not. They'll get all upset over a cheap piece of shiny plastic. That right there is a recipe that just doesn't work for me.
