The Dayton Germanfest German Car Show

Like many communities, Dayton, Ohio has an annual German Festival or “Germanfest.”  The festival began in 1983 and is billed as a “3 day picnic.”  I’ll confess that I’m not a big festival person, and I rarely make it down to the downtown Dayton area.  But this year Germanfest added a German Car Show to their festivities, so I made my way downtown to Bomberger Park for the Car Show which started at 12 Noon.  Which brings me to my first suggestion for next year’s show:  Get an earlier start.  Listen, I get it.  There’s an agenda behind adding the car show on Sunday.  I’m betting Sunday is the slowest day of the the festival being the third and final day.  Adding a car show to festival on Sunday rejuvenates interest and brings a whole new crowd of people downtown who will get thirsty and hungry and want to take advantage of the food and drink vendors at the festival.  But get the car show started no later than 10 AM.  8 AM would be preferable.  we got lucky this year that it wasn’t as hot as it normally is in August in Dayton.  But most years you can count on August being extremely hot and humid.  So running from noon until 3pm (the hottest part of the day) is ill advised.  Besides morning light is much better for photography.

The festival takes places on St. Anne’s Hill near downtown Dayton.  Again, I don’t make it to the downtown area all that often and I’ve never been to this particular area of downtown.  However, I got extremely lucky and found a parking place in front of a house just a couple of blocks from car show:

THE SHOW

To my knowledge, this is the first year they’ve done this car show and association with the Germanfest.  I really didn’t know what to expect so I had fairly low expectations, but I was pleasantly surprised by both the number and quality of vehicles that were entered in the show.  The time of the day as well as the intermittent cloud cover made for some pretty challenging photographic conditions, but I did my best:

I was immediately drawn to this pair of yellow and blue Opal GT’s.  I know next to nothing about the brand except that at one point GM owned them, but I think they killed off the brand several years ago.

The Buckeye Chapter of the BMW Car Club of America President Mark Arnold was there with his new M5 CS – my first time seeing one of these rare beauties:

Here’s a shot of Mark’s wife Mandi Rae Arnold in front of the new car:

Some fun with a traditional German hat which seemed almost mandatory to wear at the festival:

Here’s a few more photos of the wonderful examples of BMW’s at the show:

Porsche was also well represented:

I even ran across an example of a white 1987 944 in a spec nearly identical to the model I owned in college!  I’ve been looking for years at local car shows hoping to see one:

It even had the same “telephone dial” wheels my example had.

Looking inside, I found this car even had the same super rare burgundy leather interior as my old car.  It was in pretty decent shape too – only the boot for the shifter and the steering wheel showed significant wear:

It even had the same Blaupunkt stero unit weith cassette player I had!

This car was a turbo and a manual – the only two differences I could see between it and the car I owned.  What a great trip down memory lane it was to finally see a similarly spec’d example of a white 1987 944.

Here’s a few examples of other cars in the show:

I have to confess that for a first effort, the Germanfest German Car Show really blew me away.  It never occurred to me that I should enter my own 2022 BWM X3M but I regret not having done so – purely for the fun experience.   The car show drew a really nice crowd of people that came down specifically to see these amazing cars.  With a few tweaks, I think this event could become the premier Dayton area car show.  I’m already looking forward to returning next year – perhaps as a competitor.