There are so many car shows going on in Tennessee and the SE part of the US in summer it is hard to choose which one to attend. We usually reserve coverage of car shows on this site to the larger events we attend but this AACA (Antique Auto Club of America) show is unique so we thought we should give it a little publicity. It was put on this past Sunday in Murfreesboro TN and was a joint effort of three local AACA Cubs; Music City AACA, Stone River AACA and Mid-Tenn Region AACA under sponsorship of Wilson Bank and Trust.
Instead of having three smaller shows the Clubs went together and put on one larger show and I, for one, hope this trend continues. Unless you are taking your casual driver collector car to a show you are far better off just going to a cruise-in. The work to get a real show car ready for an event is a lot of work. Unfortunately, it seems many of these larger local shows have trouble getting cars judged. In this area, the clubs have gone to “drive-by” judging.
The process goes like this; you register and get your class, drive to the next table, open your hood and three or four guys go over the car. One fellow takes a mirror on a stick and places it under your car and walks around it; one looks at the interior and one looks at the engine bay; I assume someone goes over the body and paint. All this takes little more than a minute! With the high quality of cars at most shows these days there is NOWAY an accurate assessment of the quality of one car over another can be determined with such a casual inspection.
I have multiple cars and have attended shows and concours all over the Country. I have been a judge at shows. If you are not going to properly judge a car then don’t even call it that. Just give out trophies to the cars you like the best, a top 40 Award or something similar. This is not “sour grapes” because we didn’t get a trophy, we took two cars and got first and second in our classes; this is about feeling like you earned the trophy.
My wife and I have discussed this situation before and it is the reason we attend few local shows. We much prefer to attend larger more professional shows and informal cruise-ins with no awards. Our favorite thing to do remains to hook up with other collector car folks and take a short driving tour on some TN back roads and visit a new car related museums, collections or places.
Here are some photos of our picks at the car show. We like variety!
