2024 Concours d’Elegance at Carillon Historical Park

I’m ashamed to admit that while I’ve attended car related events here in the Dayton, Ohio area for the past several years, I’ve never made it to the Dayton Concours d’Elegance. The Dayton Concours d’Elegance began in the early 2000s, and has since grown into a major Midwestern event for car enthusiasts and collectors. The event features a wide array of categories, including vintage motorcycles, sports cars, and even special exhibits honoring specific makes or models. The event is normally held at Carillon Historical Park in cooperation with the Dayton Historical Society and is Carillon Historical Park’s largest fundraiser.

The Dayton Concours d’Elegance normally occurs in mid-September, on Sunday with a special preview dinner party held Saturday night.  This year tickets for the Dayton Concours d’Elegance were $20 in advance.  I didn’t attend the dinner party Saturday night, but tickets are $125 for non-members of the Dayton Historical Society.  In years past, Dayton Cars & Coffee has been invited to the Carillon Historical Park the Saturday morning of the Dayton Concours d’Elegance – but not this year.  Invariably at Cars & Coffee type events, you get a few knuckleheads that misbehave – doing burnouts, or other reckless driving.  That’s why it’s so hard to maintain a location for these events.  as you can imagine, these types of shenanigans didn’t fly with Carillon Historical Park.  it’s a shame because the park is a perfect location for just such an event.  Here’s the entrance:

I arrived just before 10AM so I was early enough to get a nice parking spot and grab a photo of my 2022 BMW X3M with the Carillon Park Deeds Bell Tower in the background:

The event itself doesn’t start until 10:30 AM which is when they officially start letting in people to either buy tickets at the event (you save $5 buy buying in advance) or present your ticket for entrance.  As far as I could tell, the event is entirely staffed by volunteers and the ticket taking process was a bit chaotic, particularly for those who bought tickets online.  For reasons I can’t explain, just showing the tickets  I was  emailed with the barcode on my phone was not acceptable.  Staff members wanted you to produce the original email receipt and the PDF that was attached which of course wasn’t exactly a quick process on your phone standing in line.  Hopefully, this can be improved in the future.  But once I made it past the painful ticket presentation process, I entered into the main building at the Carillon Historical Park.

Since I have never previously been to the Concourse I decided to just bring one camera – my FujiFilm X100VI.  As it turns out, this was an excellent choice.  I chose it because I didn’t want to be bogged down with a lot of camera gear and could better engage in and enjoy the event itself.  The event is well attended and crowded so it’s difficult/impossible to get a shot without people around a car.  Many of the cars are sitting under trees and shaded in mixed lighting – that combined with the late morning/early afternoon sun makes the event less than ideal to get top results photographs.  If I were going to bring camera with a zoom lens next time, I might recommend a 24 -70 focal length.  But the 35mm equivalent on my X100VI worked fine for 90% of the shots I tried to get.  Bringing a camera and a backpack of lenses really isn’t going to enhance either your experience or or photographs at this particular event.  Speaking of photographs, as you might imagine there were many amateur photographers walking around the event, and I greatly enjoyed asking them about their gear and talking about photography.  I’m always surprised at the number of people who are still using older DSLR cameras.  I probably talked to 10 different photographers and I think I only recall one using a mirrorless camera – a Nikon Z8.  The majority of the others that I ran into were using Canon or Nikon DSLR bodies – and not exactly newer ones either.  I think the newest Canon body that I ran into was a 5D Mark III.  I still have one of those myself…But I haven’t used it in about 15 years as it’s three generations old.  But people are still getting great results from this older technology, which I think is great.  I even spoke to a couple of FujiFilm camera shooters, who were more than a little envious of my X100VI which remains on back-order and has been since it was introduced in February.

The weather on Sunday was fantastic, if perhaps unseasonably warm.  Many of the trees in the park were just starting to change color with Fall fast approaching:

Events like the Dayton Concours d’Elegance can’t happen without the generosity of corporate sponsorship.  The White Allen Auto Group sponsors many car enthusiast events in our area and I’m very grateful that they do so – here’s a photo of their display at the Dayton Concours d’Elegance:

Forgeline also has sponsored a few events I’ve attended this year and they brought some gorgeous Porsche 911 examples to draw attention to their tent:

I guess my reluctance to attend this event in past years is due to the fact that I’m not all that interested in classic cars.  Tastes change as your age, and while I’m still not as interested in classic cars, I do enjoy seeing them at a few events from time to time and enjoy photographing them:

Carillon Historical Park Also has a number of historical architecture reproductions which are both interesting and fun to photograph:

There are of course, other categories of cars that are entered in the judging:

Even vehicles with just two wheels get love at this event:

Guests are treated to live music as they take in all the eye candy:

We were also treated to a flyover by a reproduction of the famous Wright “B” Flyer:

Here’s a few of my personal favorite cars in the competition:

I was happy to see BMW represented at the event:

The cutest car on display at the Dayton Concours d’Elegance:

While I didn’t stay the entire day, I had a fantastic time and fully admit I regret not making time to attend the Dayton Concours d’Elegance in past years.  I enjoyed not only the cars, but the people I met, as well as the chance to take a walk inside the Carillon Historical Park.  I’m already looking forward to attending the 2025 Dayton Concours d’Elegance.  For more information, please visit their website.