The show actually starts on the Friday night before with the annual camp-out at the Prado campgrounds. When we showed up bright and early on Saturday morning, the campground was packed. If you’re planning on attending next year and want to campout the night before, we highly recommend reserving a spot as soon as they’re available and if you’re as much as a VW enthusiast as we are, bring a VW Bus shaped tent. We also have sleeping bags, a BBQ set, pocket knives, towels and more VW themed camping accessories that would be perfect for shows like this.

This show really was one for the books. The perfect weather mixed with the beautiful back drop of Prado Lake brought in one of the biggest crowds the show has seen; big enough for the fire department to send people away due to maximum capacity.

With 400 bags full of free goodies, such as product catalogs, magnets, bottle openers, key chains, stickers and even an oil change gasket kit, we expected to have enough for the entire day but the bags disappeared in less than three hours. Although we ran out pretty quickly, we still enjoyed meeting current and potential customers and especially enjoyed the people watching.

One of the best results of such a huge crowd is the variety of cars that come to the show. Everything from Karmann Ghia’s, Squarebacks, Buses, Bugs, buggies and Things were on display; there was no shortage of restorations and custom builds.

One of the trends we noticed is rat rod bugs. A lot of people are opting for cheaper customizations by leaving the original paint, including patina and covering their upholstery in Mexican blankets. While that is not something that we specialize in, it sure leaves an impression and truly shows the variety of VW enthusiasts.

When it comes to full restorations, this was one of our favourites. Everything from the paint to the wheels is completely customized. Designed to look like a classic Woody Wagon, this VW has a classy root beer brown base color with hand painted body sides made to look just like real wood paneling.