Our annual concours went off without a hitch this year (except for the rain the previous evening and early morning). The first year at Lyman's (2008), we faced unbearable heat and humidity (it was close to 100 degrees) and it had everybody wilting, especially the judges who had to stand in the merciless sun all afternoon. Even in the tent. the heat was pretty brutal and took its toll on the workers.

In 2009, the cold and the rain came, and has been our close friend since then. When you've got to wear a sweatshirt while sitting in the tent, you know something just ain't quite right with the weather in June. But I think that all the judges and other workers (and even most attendees) would agree that that is a better alternative than 100 degrees. Bad luck comes in threes, so I guess next year we should be golden.

Despite the threat of rain for Sunday, we only received a couple of last minute cancellations on the evening before the show. But because of the early morning showers on Sunday, day-of-show registration was not as brisk as we would have hoped and there were several 'no shows'. When you wake up early and hear the rain pouring down, it’s hard to resist the urge to roll over and go back to sleep…there’s always next year.

If not for the rain, we would have ended up with about the same number of cars as the last 3 years.
 

Of the 23 car total, 20 were cars belonging to JCSNE members. It’s a real shame that more of our members don’t participate in this show. Considering we currently have 115 members, you’d think that we could get at least 50-60 cars on the field, since this is our one and only official show of the year. We know that many are not interested in the rigors of preparing a car to be judged, so that’s why we instituted the Enthusiast Division in 2008. The idea being that members would be happy to display their pride and joy on the field with all the other Jaguars, not having to worry about picky judges, and still have the opportunity to win some kind of prize thru popular vote.

However, our hope that participation in this division would grow over time and lure more of our members onto the showfield has not been fulfilled. Participation has been relatively stagnant at around a dozen cars or so. Now maybe our bad luck with the weather over the past 3 years has been a factor, but nevertheless it is still disappointing that our showfield remains mired in the 30-car range. If anyone has any suggestions, please make them known. You are welcome to post to the ‘social’ forum with your suggestions or complaints so that we can try to improve things for next year.  Show results were as follows:

  
Best in Show Awards
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