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Really Big Show, Really Big – eEuroparts Sponsors Saabs@Carlisle

Carlisle Events with eEuroparts.com

From accounts both told and experienced, we have come to the solid conclusion that car guys (and gals) just appreciate car shows.  It’s the perfect opportunity to absorb oneself in the culture, as well as representing you hard work and appreciating others.  Speaking as eEuroparts, this rings especially true due to SAAB being our age old key demographic, and SAAB guys REALLY love shows.  Thanks to the internet, show season has been exploding, with people looking for any and all reasons to spread on some tire shine and chat it up for a day in the sunshine (and also rain, as will be addressed in a minute).

The best part about the bigger shows is that they almost always find themselves on the end of a long road trip, and such is always the case for Carlisle.  Nestled firmly in the large open space between Philadelphia and Pittsburg, Carlisle PA has evolved to be somewhat of a car culture mecca, and is a great trip to take during the day.  With two blasts down the legendary Merritt Parkway (For us anyway), the scenery features the best of what a 6hr road trip can offer.  The fairgrounds there host several shows a year, but one is particularly special to us.  That’s the Carlisle Import and Kit Nationals.

The Import and Kit Nationals is the perfectly wonky blend of high performance, slick, and classic import cars and the wackiest kit cars you can imagine.  The show is fairly well separated up, but venture too far away from the European country region and you’ll find yourself surrounded by all manners of fiberglass bodied wonderment, from Manx Buggies to garage-built Porsche 356’s.  That’s not even the most interesting part, however.  The interesting part is that among this mostly import car themed show, the SAABs always arrive in supreme force.

A cultural anomaly starting many years ago, SAABs@Carlisle has become a show within a show, erecting a positively gigantic circus tent right in the middle of the show field.  Underneath you can find the rarest, cleanest, and most culturally significant SAABs in the country.

On Saturday, eEuroparts.com’s Mr. Trionic gave a seminar on T5’ing

Because of this, we just had to help support some of our best customers around, eventually leading to the new title of this show-with-a-show, “eEuroparts.com Presents SAABs@Carlisle”.  It was fantastic, because this allowed us to set up under the tent, alongside an ultra historic Sonett 1, Chassis #6.  The car was donated for the weekend thoughtfully from the Bill Jacobson collection to be featured as the show’s main headliner, and seeing it up close and personal was truly a delight.  Just don’t ask for parts for it.

All day Saturday and Sunday we were giving away our $15 site credits, alongside bottles of free water to the patrons who appeared to be melting before us.  Temperatures were in the mid 80s with humidity skyrocketing, being out in the sun was downright oppressive.  The tent was a fantastic piece of centrally located relief, we want to extend a huge thanks to Julie and the entire Central Penn SAAB Club for organizing the show and putting it up.

Just as soon as we couldn’t take it anymore, the sky grew dark and the forecast predictions we had all been watching on our personal devices looked like they were coming true.  A line of heavy storms was definitely on the way as all the cars in ‘Drop Top Alley’ were un-dropping their ragtops and battening down hatches.  Simultaneously, every piece of paper blew off of our table, and we quickly followed suit.

The torrential downpour only lasted about an hour, and gave everyone a chance to get out of the sun and hang out together under the main tent.  I have a feeling that even though the show seemed to be rained out, a lot of new friends were made because of the storm.

Just as soon as it came, the storm front had passed, and all the show cars had that perfect fresh rain glisten on them.  Even though most of the rest of the show has high-tailed it out, the SAABs remained in numbers in the hundreds, some of whom purely for the reason that they didn’t want to see what the storm had done to their campsite on the other side of the hill.  Others of course stuck around for the award ceremony, that saw winners happily accepting plaques for a number of judged categories, including ‘Diamond in the Rough’ and ‘Dare to be Different’.

As day turned to night, SAABs@Carlisle remained the strongest part of the entire show, with an evening showing of “The Fastest Indian” playing at 8:30, followed by the night time antics of a fairground full of people in party mode, mixed with quickly emptying coolers.  The night was full of games in the campground, surrounded by classic and modern show cars, and most luckily the whole place more or less had dried out before it was time to get to sleep.

Sunday was relatively low key, with light showers sticking around for much of the day.  We took it upon ourselves to hit the autocross track with Josh’s land yacht of a diesel Mercedes, and enjoy a short bought of opposite-lock.  A wet track made the experience 100x more fun, with the car more or less taking the roll of drift sled, than slow autocross car.  While applying liberal use of ‘Not Breaking Anything’, we were able to load up the car and head back in one piece, with almost 170 eEuro site credits given out, and at least 4 runs to the grocery store to pick up cases of water to hand out.

Carlisle is always a great migration of SAAB people, and even with a stormy forecast, the Swedes rolled in with so much force that it was hard to tell that there was another car show going on.  All weekend long we were told stories about how eEuro is responsible for keeping many of these cars on the road, and we were happy to respond with the assurance that we will be back!  Thanks again to the Pennsylvania SAAB Club, with out you guys, we wouldn’t have such an impressive venue to represent at.  See you all next year!  Visit the photo gallery here: [Click here]

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