The Hampton Car Show will be held this weekend at Band Shell Park.
Last year, a record 225 entries took part in the Hampton Car Show, an event that dates back to the 1980’s.
“In 1980 they had it out at the fairgrounds in Hampton and then there was even an indoor show in the convention center at one time and then it became a Main Street Hampton thing for several years we had several committee members on that; Joel Orr and Norm Holm and Mike Holm. And then the committee kind of got burned out and they were going to phase it out. And then fire department took it over for like two years. And then they decided it was going to be a lot of work and was going to kind of let it drop and Norm and I got back talking and said, we can’t let that happen. So we started it back up with Main Street again after that two years. And then that went as far as COVID. And then everything was shut down as everyone knows. And my wife and I decided that we were not shutting it down. And we started with the city and Bill Hittle and his team have been great help with us.”
That’s Jeff Spear, who is organizing the event this year. Spear says a popular part of the event is handing out unique trophies to the show exhibitors.
“Back in ’99, my brother Cory and I were doing the car show and we’re just getting tired of the plastic trophies and we decided to make something out of billet aluminum and since then it’s grown and this year we’re doing another one in the series of our gas pump thing so it’s going to be a Tokheim clock face dial gas pump this year in a small scale. We got the pattern from Terry Bents, he’s a big gas pump guy and he let us borrow his to measure and stuff so we’re giving about 85 of them away so there’s a lot of trophies given away. We spent a lot of time on those.”
The Hampton Car Show is Sunday from noon to 3:00 p.m. at Band Shell Park in Hampton with awards being presented at 3:30. There will also be food vendors and games at the park.
A Friday Night Car Cruise will be held ahead of the car show. Line-up for the car cruise is at the Faith Baptist Church at 5:30 p.m. Friday with the cruise beginning at 6:00.
Full interview with Jeff Spear
Look out, the photo is an entry from the 2023 car show.
