Stonham Barns Park near Stowmarket was the location of our first Carrot Town Garage American Car Show held on Sunday 25th July - and what a day it was!
Having never put on an event like this before, it was to be a real venture into the unknown for myself and the Carrot Town Garage team. I headed over on the Saturday with my daughter, Jen and Johnny to get everything set up ready for the show.
The forecast was not looking good for Sunday with predictions of heavy rain and thunderstorms all day - standard weather for us Brits - but despite having almost 400 cars pre booked for the Sunday show, by Saturday people had started to message in the afternoon to see if the show was still going ahead given the weather predictions, and a few people were starting to cancel. We began to wonder what we'd let ourselves in for...
There was no time to worry though as we got everything set up on Saturday and then headed off to our hotel ready for an early start the next day. The gates open at 7.30am on show days for cars to enter and there is normally a queue waiting for the gates to open. We arrived at 6.30am on the Sunday to finalise things then at 7am grabbed our high vis jackets and radios ready for the onslaught of cars coming into the show. However when the gates opened at 7.30am, no one was there...
8am came and still no one.
8:15am and a couple of Carrot Town Garage Car Club guys turned up.
It was like having a party where you were wondering if anyone was going to come! Had the weather predictions really put everyone off even though it wasn't raining yet??
Finally at around 9am a trickle of cars started to arrive followed by a stream until all of a sudden we had around 200 cars! I'm guessing people had woken up, looked at the weather and then decided to go - lukily for us - and they day continued to improve from there - we were on the up!
There was a huge selection of Classic cars ranging from a 1930s Ford Model A right up to the modern day Mustang Challengers and Corvettes.
We had good attendance from various clubs such as Classic Corvette Club UK and Simply Mustangs UK; plus the UK Prowlers Group even brought a couple of cars along.
But the majority of visitors had just come for a day out with their cars, which was lovely. I was surprised to see so many people sporting our Carrot Town Garage merchandise - mainly our T-shirts - which really made my day!
The Classic Car show officially kicked off at 10am and our DJ played a selection of Rockerbilly type music throughout the day while our show host interviewed various people about their cars. By lunchtime the sun had come out and it turned into a beautiful day and the event had a very relaxed garden party type feel to it.
Despite being summoned in every direction throughout the day I did manage to chat to quite a few people about their cars and recognised a few familiar faces and recognised a few people I had spoken to on the phone about their cars too, it was great to meet everyone in person!
Throughout the day, Matt, our chief mechanic, was tasked with choosing the best 10 cars of various different categories and an overall show winner. We awarded rosettes and the best in show went to a stunning 1956 Chevrolet Corvette C1.
The whole day was just amazing and the weather could not have been better. In the following days I received emails and text messages from people saying how much they enjoyed the day which really made the whole show worthwhile.
I would like to take the opportunity to thank Jen, Johnny and all the Carrot Town Garage team for their efforts in putting this show together and a huge thank you to everyone who came and brought their cars out for the day despite the prospect of impending rain. We are already planning next year's show and will confirm dates as soon as we have them.
