ORIGINAL: p51mstg

My wife and I are organizing our first car show this year. One of the decisions that we made early on was who to bring in as judges. We had advice from several knowledgable car show people to the contrary, but what we decided was that the best judges would be the car owners themselves.

If I entered my car, and the local mayor said I had a nice car (and awarded me a trophy), I'd smile when they took my picture. If car owners that put thousands of hours into their own car said that I deserved a trophy, that would be a complement of a much higher order.

In the process of promoting our show, I was at a neighboring car show a couple of weeks ago, and talked to a guy with an immaculate1969 Mach1. He said he entered a big car show this spring and beat out many cars he thought were much better than his. A few weeks later, he went to a small car show and got nothing.

By sheer coincidence, this same guy has run another car show that is widely respected. We were able to gleen some good advice from him. Unfortunately, he had no idea what gave him the win (when he didn't deserve it), or no win (when it should've been an easy trip to the trophy stand).

When someone like that doesn't understand, I doubt there's any logic to the decision.

Edit: I forgot to mention in the original post that unless it's a major show with actual published judging guidelines, and things like that, I don't see these local car show trophies as the true motivation for showing a car. Maybe it's being able to be amongst the coolest cars around, or maybe it's meeting other "car people", or maybe it's something as simple as having an excuse to get the pride and joy out of the garage. Whatever the reason, the trophies, dash plaques, and other goodies are icing on the cake, not the cake itself. Just my 2 cents.....