NWTC Car Show and Swap Meet

The Northeast Wisconsin Technical College (NWTC) Car Show and Swap Meet was held on May 17th under sunny but cool skies. This is the 31st year for the show held on the campus of NWTC. The event is organized by the NWTC Auto Club and the proceeds are used to benefit the students and the club's service learning projects.

In its first few years the show used only a small portion of the campus' parking area but it has steadily grown. It now features over 800 cars, trucks and motorcycles. Food and beverages are available, but the lines are long. The swap meet part of the show is pretty small and seems to be sort of an afterthought. I think if they decided not to offer it very few people would notice.

I always consider this show the unofficial kickoff of car show season. The exhibitors come from mainly Wisconsin and Upper Michigan, but there are many fine examples of automotive excellence. The cars are not arranged by category, but the owners seem to organize themselves when they can.

One group of young enthusiasts were proudly displaying their "Fast and Furious" type of cars. There were well tuned Honda Sis and a fast looking Toyota FRS. One of the cars had a high powered audio system that was being demonstrated to the joy of some and dismay of others. One of my favorite Japanese offerings was a Subaru WRX Sti. This car took part in the exhaust competition in the four cylinder category.

The majority of the cars in the show were of domestic origin. There were the old Chevys, Fords and Dodges along with a few nice Cadillacs and Plymouths. There was a small group of owners of the discontinued Pontiac G8. There were about six of them and looking at those cars one wonders how Pontiac ever went out of production.

There were not many old Corvettes, but a good number of C6 and C7 models. Newer Mustangs and Camaros were plentiful. One car I had hoped to see but did not was Ford Mustang Boss 302 that was in production in 2012 and 2013. There was a nice green late model Mustang that excelled in the eight cylinder exhaust contest.

There were a few motorcycles on display. A couple were very highly customized, but most were pretty ordinary. This show does not cater to motorcycles, so it doesn't draw very many of them. The two most noticeable bikes had the usual big tricycle front wheel and the stretched bags

There is a dedicated group of bicyclists in the Green Bay area and some of them are trying to get bicycles into the show as a new category. It hasn't happened yet, but a few bike owners brought their human powered vehicles out for the day. One of them is a more customized version of my Schwinn Typhoon that I wrote about a few months ago. It is owned by the gentleman who worked on my bike at Pete's Garage on Broadway in Green Bay.

Over the course of a couple of hours I took a good tour of the grounds, listened to the exhaust competition, and went back to see a few favorite cars. It was an outstanding way to begin the car show season for 2017.