I appreciated all your responses about how early a concours should start in last week’s blog.
I’ve decided that this week I will give you more ideas for a concours weekend, based on the Forest Grove Concours template.
I want to recognize that this will be the concours’ 53rd year, and it is the longest running concours in the Pacific Northwest. So, clearly, they are doing a good job. I’m just going to suggest a few tweaks.
By the way, my experience includes being the Head Judge of the Atlanta Concours, morning emcee of Pebble Beach, emcee of the Kirkland, EuroAutoFest, Hilton Head and Forest Grove concours among others, and judge at various additional events. I’ve seen a few of these rodeos.
First of all, I would have a promotional email sent out a few months in advance, inviting entrants and audience. (You could start selling tickets then.) That would also lay out the schedule of the weekend.
The activities would start with a Saturday tour that would begin at 9 a.m. There would be an emcee at the tour drive-off to thank sponsors and generally create order. The emcee would give people warnings about how much time they had left before the tour. Someone from the concours would be the official starter.
Any car could be entered. If there was an overflow, cars entered in the concours would be chosen first.
There would be light canvas goodie bags for everyone, hopefully with a bottle of wine and some other treats. And a copy of SCM, of course!
Lunch, about three hours later, would be at a winery. The emcee would welcome everyone and thank the sponsors. The last 15 minutes would be the presenting of casual awards for categories like “car longest in one family,” “most recently purchased,” etc.
There would be no Saturday night dinner. It’s just too much to have a dinner that keeps you out late and then be expected to get your car to the show field at the crack of dawn.
Okay, now we are at concours day. Next week we’ll walk through that.
As always, I look forward to your thoughts below.
Read my previous blog posts here.
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