What are your thoughts on the amount of VW shows in the calendar? 

 Having our feet firmly in both Watercooled and Aircooled camps it’s becoming a bit of a farce to me.  There’s is a new show popping up every week – I really hope they are being put on for the love, and not just to rake in the cash. Only having a limited number of staff, one van and a shop to run here on a Saturday there are only so many we can get to.

 Casting my mind back five or ten years, there were a handful of shows each year, some of those you had to share with the watercooled crowd (no bad thing really), then you were on the edge of your seat for two months while the mags wrote up their findings and published the show report with a picture of your car, or not; well not mine at least!

Fast forward and there are a few factors which might have brought on the show epidemic. The  Internet, God bless it. It is so easy to advertise an event these days – it will be passed round the forums quicker than you can imagine. Even quicker if you mention VW’s and put a picture of a campervan on it. That goes for anything else too, as below, T-Shirts, Mugs, Posters and Photographs.  The huge popularity of VW’s as a lifestyle choice has a lot to answer for.

 

This weekend just gone saw the debut year of the Amakuru VW show in Arundel, Sussex (just down the road to me). Whilst there were a few factors against this show from the outset, VW Action and Edition38 being two huge ones, not to mention the unreliable British weather. The show as a whole felt like a VW Show for the sake of a VW show… the charity fundraising aside. The stalls were catered for those who wanted the lifestyle and, from my point of view, neglected the owners and core members of the VW community who for whatever the reason didn’t venture to Northamptonshire for the weekend.

Biting off more than you can chew. This sums up a number of these new shows. Please don’t take this is as negativity – more constructive criticism, because there is actually a market for the right kind of show. Personally, I have swerved a number of events this year due to previous year’s experience. The shows ill mannered clientele, the quality and maintenance of facilities provided, the loud music and revving of engines all night, what ever happened to “No Worries”, chilling with your mates, having a laugh and a joke and drinking till the early hours.

So, new show organiser, what should you of done? That’s easy for me to say I guess, hindsight is great, if only we could use it before things happened! Personally with the Arundel show, this should have been a 1 day event, with a camp over on Saturday night. Stonor Park pulls this format out the bag every year because two days is too much for it to take. The other thing that separates an old favourite like Stonor, or even the Sussex VW show from the “lifestyle” VW show is it caters for the enthusiast, and a VW show with no VW’s (and it is the enthusiast you are relying on to bring their VW’s)  is little more than a craft fair / Sunday market.

 

Ironically it is the enthusiast that the lifestyle is built around. Photos of “our” vehicles are used on canvasses, t shirts, mugs, chalk drawings etc..If it wasn’t for the VW enthusiasts over the last 30-40 years, these cars would be long gone, like the others of their era – there would be no scene for the lifestyle to model itself upon.

To round off  this post, which started as a bit of a dig at these kind of shows, congratulations are due to the organisers of the Amakuru VW show, who by all accounts put on a great show for a lot of people who camped over. (Their Facebook page is full of praise for the way the show was run.) However i still think there are too many “VW” shows in a year!

 Perhaps with my views on other “anti social” shows I should move me and my VW to a lifestyle show after all, get a good night sleep and chill out with friends?

Andy