My first concours

I think I participated in my first concours this weekend. We were at a PCA event in Cocoa, Fla.

I have shown cars before, but don't remember ever being judged. I know it's not everyone's cup of tea, but we had fun and saw some neat cars. Plus they did brats and some awesome German potato salad for lunch. Basically, lunch was $10, no extra charge to officially enter the concours. I ensured that no one else would come in last place.

Good for you. I enjoy entering concours events with my cars. It provides another set of eyes for details I miss for when I think I'm making my car look good. It pushes me to the next level.

Oh yeah, there's definitely things I could do to make the car look better. Fortunately or not, all of the replacement rubber trim pieces are in stock--meaning there's not a huge excuse for not buying them. More importantly, it was a way to have fun with the car for a few hours. Maybe one day we'll do it again.

And a few photos have been posted:

http://grassrootsmotorsports.com/project-cars/1984-porsche-911-carrera/dont-judge-us/

We've done a couple. The nice 1800ES even won 1st place at one right after finishing the transmission conversion and the engine bay was still uber-clean.

That said, we don't treat them any different than a normally non-judged or people's choice show: get the car as clean as possible and go. Don't really care if we win. No place to put more trophies anyway.

There is concours and there is CONCOURS! I liked the ones that I attended that were for a wider variety of level of finish. When they began to request only top quality cars, I moved on. The difference is between a judged car show that welcomes all levels and one that caters to only high end versions transported in trailers. I never drove a car with which I could expect a trophy although I do have a second place somewhere. I liked the perks afforded to entrants and savored the cars as a participant. So a judged car show is always a fun day but at some point an event can start to take itself too seriously. Cheers Ron

I personally like concours where lots of marques are represented, because I get to see nice examples of cars I don't usually see or know much about. I've entered one or another of our cars in such events so other people who feel as I do get to see them. I have no intent of winning anything.

One marque club events are less fun (maybe because I tend to get drafted into being a judge, which is work), and I don't care for how cut-throat the competition sometimes gets between the top contenders. Still, can't blame anyone for being out to win, if that's what keeps them in the hobby.