VW Nationals 2019
2019 VW Nationals
Hi all, well the 32nd VW Nationals have come and gone, and again our biggest VW show of the year was very well attended. The VW Nationals and the club itself could not exist without help from our club members and the club committee. We needed help leading up to the Nationals, during the day and after a long day at the show packing up the venue, so a big thank you to you all, the show wouldn’t have been a success without your help.
Due to a lot of hard work by Dave Birchall we again had our Supersprint at Sydney Motorsport Park on the Saturday. Unfortunately there weren’t many competitors but that allowed for more runs during the day. The day ran very well thanks to our club members helping out and Craig Adams organising a very professional group of officials from ARDC. A special thanks Greg and Rohan Thatcher – Rohan did an exceptional job as Clerk of Course and Chris Fraser this year was our Chief Steward, Rudi Franks was Chief Scrutineer and Mandy Conway from our Canberra Chapter had a ball as a first time flaggy.
We had no delays due to oil downs or crashes which was good. There were quite a few non-VWs running, also lots of non-members or members of other clubs. We will see how much money we lost on the day and maybe next year have the Supersprint at the new privately-run circuit at Luddenham.
After racing it was off to Fairfield on Saturday night to get the venue setup for Sunday’s show n shine – setting up signs, setting the layout, putting up tables, hanging banners, organising the club office and shop and all the other work getting the venue ready. Early Sunday it was very cold with lots of cars and traders arriving before dawn. Almost all the traders were in place early.
You may have noticed construction work being carried out at the northern end of venue beyond the swappers. This will be a big new under-cover area that we can put to good use next year.
Thank you to all the sponsors for their continued support. The updated sponsor list appears on the back page of our monthly magazine. Please support them, because they support us. The show classes and peer judging that have worked so well were the same as last year, with addition of a new category for VW factory exotics like SP or Puma, and one for Porsches.
The queues at the entry were long at times but the cars moved through a bit quicker than previous years. We have plans to make this quicker next year, and will have an electronic payment system so entrants can just tap to pay and move on. We had 198 entries in the car show this year, six more than last year, but even so they just fitted into the space available. All of them were through the entry gates and parked by 10:45am.
Almost all the 41 entry categories had participants this year. Beetle '68-on Modified was the most popular category, with 15 entries – the most we have ever had. Rat Class had 13 entries, showing that the 'rat look' is as popular as ever. Kombi '68-79 Standard had 12 entries, and Non-Factory Off-Road and Buggies had 11 entries – again, the most ever. There were two cars entered in the concours category this year, Ken's beautiful '72 Superbug and Davis' lovely '77 Microbus.
As for the water-coolers, there were 32 Golfs entered this year, six more than last year, across seven categories. The most popular were '93-'97 Golf 3 and '13-on Golf 7, with 8 entries each. There were 6 entries in '74-'82 Golf 1, which is a great result for a car that sold here in comparatively small numbers over 40 years ago.
Every show category had a First Place trophy, with the more popular categories also having a Second, and sometimes even a Third Place trophy.
On the other hand, a great way to be assured of winning a trophy is to be the only entrant in your category! This year we saw only one entry in the Factory Exotics; Factory Off-road, Polo, Golf 4, Porsche, SEAT and Skoda categories, so these entries all won a trophy by default. There were also just a couple of entries in the Karmann Ghia Standard, Karmann Cabriolet, Best Engineered/Race (both air and water), Golf 2 and Golf 6, VW Sports and VW Commercial, and Audi. I hope we see more VWs having a go in these categories next year.
The only category with no entries this year was VW SUV (Tiguan and Touareg). So if you own one of those, bring it along next year!
All entrants received peer judging sheets, and altogether some 1,772 separate votes were cast on these and posted in the blue box before the close-off at 12:30 (though sheets from latecomers were still being collected at 13:30!) That's 540 more votes than last year, which shows this system is increasing in popularity and works very well. There were also an additional 506 People's Choice votes cast, 40 more than last year, which made 2,278 votes and 198 entries for Phil to enter into the computer. This took all morning and lunchtime, but the actual calculating of the results was quickly done with Phil’s custom-built Excel spreadsheet. The results were all worked out by 1:30pm.
This year my son David was back again taking the photos of all the entrants’ cars as they came through the gate in the morning, and he and Phil spent all afternoon matching up the photos to the 61 winners for the PowerPoint presentation, which was ready to go for the 3pm trophy presentation. The results of the show are in this issue, and we will be replaying David's PowerPoint at the June meeting on Thursday 20th at the Greyhound Club in case you missed it. We will also be handing out the nine trophies that weren’t claimed on the day as they left early. Thank you to all the helpers on the main gate, and the traffic marshals, and the band of ladies taking entries, Shirley, Gwen and Martha.
Raymond and Grace, and their girls Bettina and Kira, were busy in the Club shop all day, not just selling shirts, jackets, mugs and hats, but taking memberships and answering hundreds of questions all day. Christine couldn’t attend this year as she had fantastic holiday booked so Conie stepped in to help out.
This year our major raffle prize was a unique two children Kombi donated by Carl and his import company. Parramatta Rotary again did a great job with the BBQ lunch, and there were also a great variety of other food, drink and snack sellers throughout the show. The swap meet was a bit smaller than last year but was busy all day and the trader stands had crowds of interested buyers checking out their wares.
Once again, thank you to all our members who helped out with the Nationals at Fairfield on Saturday night and Sunday. It made the setting up, running of the show and the packing up afterwards so much easier. We were all worn out at the end of the day. I think having two golf buggies again really saved our aging legs on the day.
We are open to all input and suggestions from our members, both at the Committee and Monthly Club meetings, on the Nationals this year. What you liked, what you didn’t and how we can make it even better next year. Don’t be shy, let us know what you think. So if you have some great ideas or would like to help out next year, please come along to committee or monthly meeting. Or drop us an email or leave a message on the Club website.
See you with your VW soon.
Steve Carter
