Louisville Concours at Churchill Downs | Page 5 | FerrariChat

Louisville Concours at Churchill Downs

Discussion in 'North Central - USA (MI, IN, OH, KY, WV)' started by kvisser, Jul 30, 2008.

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  1. F1tommy

    F1tommy F1 World Champ
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    #101 F1tommy, Oct 7, 2008
    Pretty nice selection. I think they did a nice job. The black 410 Superamerica is from the Chicago area. Very nice car.
    Won its class at Pebble Beach.
     
  2. chaparralman

    chaparralman Karting

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    #102 chaparralman, Oct 7, 2008
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    The Louisville Concours was a very enjoyable day. I especially enjoyed the diverse selection of quality cars on the field. Good job to the car selection people. The venue was fantastic and the Saturday evening party and dinner was excellent fun. I am honored to have been given an award for my McKee/Lola race car as well. I hope to see this event continue. It can only get better.

    Casey Putsch
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  3. Doug

    Doug Formula 3

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    #103 Doug, Oct 7, 2008
    Matt
    Where were you? we were there all day.
     
  4. wetpet

    wetpet F1 World Champ
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    #104 wetpet, Oct 7, 2008
    interesting observations. From another perspective: I was involved in a lot of the events (attending mostly) and i never noticed indigo cars. Except for a few people wearing baseball caps and i wondered what that was. i was all over that event from friday to sunday at 6pm and i never noticed them.
     
  5. silvergts1998

    silvergts1998 Formula 3

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    #105 silvergts1998, Oct 7, 2008
    Not talking about indigo but none the less...I do not care at this point. Chum the waters and the fish will come. :)
     
  6. Pars

    Pars Formula Junior

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    #106 Pars, Oct 7, 2008
    Last edited: Oct 7, 2008
    Nice analogy :) I really think that you are mistaken about it though. The motive is there, but I really don't think that was what this was about. There were a lot of other people that helped put this event together with nothing to gain other than to help Brooklawn, a very worthy cause.

    You are certainly entitled to your opinion but hopefully before the next Concours I can change your mind about that ;)
     
  7. indaville

    indaville Formula 3

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    #107 indaville, Oct 7, 2008

    We ran through pretty quick. Saw Steve there though. Nice event hope to be more involved next year.

    Matt
     
  8. silvergts1998

    silvergts1998 Formula 3

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    #108 silvergts1998, Oct 7, 2008
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    I am sure the majority had pure intentions like you. You're cool with me...but anyways..I'm not a wine and cheese guy...I'm a Italian grease monkey. Instead of putting on white gloves to eat cheese when a Ferrari arrives, I put on rubber gloves. (Maybe I'm better off going to a Carl Casper show or street rod swap show :) )Joey, when are they going to have another one of those again? Had a good time browsing the tools and products! Gotta get ready for a Ferrari coming in for service here soon.
     
  9. Pars

    Pars Formula Junior

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    #109 Pars, Oct 7, 2008
    If you like those, you should have seen the 350Z at the Concours ;)

    How's that Diablo coming back together? We could use one at the Concours next year, there were no Diablos there this year :D
     
  10. silvergts1998

    silvergts1998 Formula 3

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    #110 silvergts1998, Oct 7, 2008
    LOL!.

    350z with naaws!

    Not sure if I will have the Diablo or the Ferrari next year. Might be getting something else. We will see.
     
  11. wingfeather

    wingfeather F1 Rookie

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    #111 wingfeather, Oct 7, 2008
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  12. rext

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    #112 rext, Oct 7, 2008
    I think the "sales" tent would be fine,in the parking lot(corral) with some other nice non show cars?Just sell the space at a premium,afterall its a fundraiser and its a write off? Its win win !
    Why was the show on Sunday?It puts pressure on people to get out and then get home unlike a Saturday show?There were ten times more non show cars than show cars at the Keeneland show.They drew more people than the entrants.I like about anything mechanical.But 90% of the people want to see the flashy cars.Fcars,Lambos etc.They could care less about old prewar cars,in my opinion.If you are doing a fundraiser,you want to appeal to all people.I.E. more people = more money raised.I know you guys know this but just think about next year,dont make it too exclusive that you make people feel unwelcome or out of place.Im not saying ricers but bring in plenty of what is going to draw people.Even if its 10 308's and yes,two TR's.The more the merrier!!
     
  13. EarlyCat

    EarlyCat Moderator
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    #113 EarlyCat, Oct 7, 2008
    Adam there is a fall swap meet in the beginning of Nov, complete with a car auction, and I have seen a few Ferraris in that as well.

    Indigo car lot is Todd Blue FYI.

    I think the event looked pretty neat, it takes time to get these things the best. I went to the Keenland event years ago, it was much smaller than it is today. Like I said earlier I would prefer it on a different date due to my obligations at the St. James event.
     
  14. rext

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    #114 rext, Oct 7, 2008
    By the way,whos F40?
     
  15. wingfeather

    wingfeather F1 Rookie

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    #115 wingfeather, Oct 7, 2008
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  16. wingfeather

    wingfeather F1 Rookie

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    #116 wingfeather, Oct 7, 2008
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  17. wingfeather

    wingfeather F1 Rookie

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    #117 wingfeather, Oct 7, 2008
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  18. Pars

    Pars Formula Junior

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    #118 Pars, Oct 7, 2008
    Nice pics! I love the blurred blue Porsche (?) coming out of the tunnel. That is really a great capture!
     
  19. wingfeather

    wingfeather F1 Rookie

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    #119 wingfeather, Oct 7, 2008
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  20. kvisser

    kvisser Formula 3

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    #120 kvisser, Oct 7, 2008
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    I think more money was raised at the Black Tie on Saturday then from the gate on Sunday.

    Tom, nice shots.

    regards

    ken
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  21. kvisser

    kvisser Formula 3

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    #121 kvisser, Oct 7, 2008
    Last edited: Oct 7, 2008
    Hey guys, I just got an email from Jim Mahanes who was one of the primary forces getting the work done for the concours. He is trying to register for Fchat but asked me to post this from him:


    Greetings folks,

    As one of the organizers of the Louisville Concours, I want to thank everyone for their interest and opinions (both positive and negative) about the show. I want to hear everything from all sides so that we can improve on the things we did wrong (and I know there were plenty of things we did wrong).

    A couple of items I’d like to bring up to help clarify some things.

    CAR CLUBS: As Ken said earlier: Churchill Downs would not allow us to set aside space for car clubs. We asked them to do this, but they nixed it. CD was open the day of the event for Off Track Betting and they also had private group tours going. They ABSOLUTELY would not shut these down for us, nor allow special parking provisions of any kind…so we had to work around them. They would not allow us VIP parking, Car club Parking, or even Media Parking. We tried to get all three.

    We ran into some resistance in a lot of areas with CD, but we realized we were an unknown to them, and an unproven event….so we chose to pick our battles carefully, bust our butts to put on a good first Concours and go back to them when we had something to show.

    Our original ideas were to have half the infield set aside for car clubs to park right on the field. We decided to nix the idea when the number of cars grew so large we worried about getting the exhibitors on the field in a timely and organized manner….which brings me to the next item. The number and quality of cars.

    NUMBER OF CARS:

    When we started this, we had no idea if anyone would even come….so we accepted just about everyone who entered. As better and better cars came in, we realized how wrong we were on the front end and that we were going to be in a tough position. Certainly there were cars on the field that shouldn’t have been there….and some cars that were not on the field that should have been there. I guess the best thing I can say is that we are aware of this (would be worse if we didn’t realize it).

    As we move forward, we hope to refine a lot of things and selection of cars will certainly be one of them.

    CLASSES:

    We now realize we had too few classes. We started with 18 and were advised to narrow it down to nine and award many awards “within” the classes. This is something that will be ironed out by next year.

    VENUE:

    Yeah, I agree….the infield is certainly not Pebble Beach or Amelia (you folks should have seen it before WE got ahold of it….vast improvement for the way it looked two weeks prior to the event). We did some “market testing” long ago and found that had we had this thing anywhere else, we wouldn’t have an event…..let’s just say the Twin Spires are what everyone came to see. Vallhalla is nice and a name, but it’s not Churchill and certainly doesn’t hold the tradition and mystic that Churchill has. We are going to try and dress it up even more next year.

    PR/ADVERTISING

    Since this was MY area, I’ll take sole blame for this. There were three major hurdles that we were never able to overcome (and those directly impacted the amount of publicity that we were able to generate).

    1) The economy. The economy just STINKS (as most of you know)…which means we had a hard time landing sponsors this year. Sponsors mean $ and advertising costs $. We had to rely on non-paid (or editorial) media to get the word out….which brings me to Ryder Cup.

    2) Ryder Cup. We were stuck with having the Ryder Cup two weeks earlier right here in our back yard. The press was so pre-occupied with Ryder that it was hard to get ANY press until that was over. If we got it before the Ryder Cup nobody would have remembered it when it came time for the event and the press would have turned their backs on us because they had already covered it once (that happened in two cases that I know of).

    3) Late. We were late in just about everything we did this year. This will get better.

    IN CLOSING:

    Suffice to say, this was a far-from-perfect Concours d’Elegance…we realize that. There were lots of lessons learned and a lot of work to be done before next year’s show.

    I’m surprised nobody has mentioned the Awards Ceremony…which was really a cluster You-Know-What. We dropped the ball on that very badly.

    The one thing I hope everyone will take into account…..at no time did we approach this with any sort of pretentiousness, or false sense that we had everything right. We were newbies at this and our only goal this year was to put on a decent first year show, and not screw things up so that nobody would want to come back. I like to think we accomplished that….you guys may have different opinions.

    We have a lot of work ahead of us, but we’re committed to turning this into something grand and we hope that you guys stick with us and continue to remain interested. We don’t have all the answers, and I hope we don’t pretend that we do. In fact, I’m interested in all opinions because the show is really for you guys….lovers of cars.

    Feel free to e-mail me any and all suggestions. I do ask that you are constructive in your criticisms…those are the only ones that will help us………destructive criticisms only make the sender look like a butt-head.

    My e-mail is: [email protected]

    Regards to everyone and thanks for your interest and opinions,

    Jim Mahanes
    PR/Advertising
    Louisville Concours d’Elegance
     
  22. wetpet

    wetpet F1 World Champ
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    #122 wetpet, Oct 7, 2008
    Last edited: Oct 7, 2008
    Jim, you are a good man. It was a pleasure working with you.

    I would also like to announce that i won the f-chat foot race by a mile. I'm sure ken will post pics.
     
  23. rext

    rext Karting

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    #123 rext, Oct 7, 2008
    I think that proves what I am trying to tell you? Are you saying there is nothing more to be had at the gate? If you limit the market,you limit the head count. FWIW.
     
  24. wingfeather

    wingfeather F1 Rookie

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    #124 wingfeather, Oct 7, 2008
    All in all, a great show! This event reminded me of the first Concours I attended in Santa Barbara, CA :)

    I'm sure that any growing pains will be resolved with time. The awards ceremony could have gone smoother, but that is self-evident I'm sure. I overheard plenty of happy conversations from participants as well as guests. The only complaints overheard were of the 350Z being placed in the show (or at least the supercar category), and the time table for bringing the cars onto the field (due to the horses of course).

    Jim M, the staff treated me like a star. Much appreciated! Let me know if I can contribute any talent in the future.

    Ken, thank you for the kind words. As soon as I can find a place to host more images I will share the others.
     
  25. SmokinFast

    SmokinFast Karting

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    #125 SmokinFast, Oct 7, 2008
    .

    Adam,
    See, I could have tried to get my RX-7 in the Concours... LOL.

    All in all, a pretty solid event especially given its first year. I think there has been some valid input on areas for improvement (and reasons for some of missed opportunities). Repeating what others have said, a well thought out car corral to draw the different clubs should be something on the "must do" list for next year. It will help draw even more enthusiasts to this event.

    Jim
     
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