Big news for The Classic Car Show 2024 is that this year’s event will be held over two days at Nasrec Expo Centre, south west of Johannesburg. The show will be held on July 6 and 7, 2024, and promises a feast of motoring entertainment.
As in previous years, The Classic Car Show will run alongside the hugely popular German vs Jap show for late model classics built in either Germany or Japan. At last year’s show, run as a one-day event, a record crowd of over 30 000 spectators visited the event, and this led to the decision to run the 2024 event over the Saturday and Sunday on the first weekend in July.
“It was amazing to see the huge crowd we had last year, but logistically it was becoming difficult to manage,” said organiser Paulo Calisto. “We decided that with so much interest, going for a two-day event was the logical option, and we are really excited about the new format.”
For the past number of years, the German vs Jap segment has grown incrementally, to the point where 1 000s of modified VW Golfs, Polos, Opels and Audis brush door handles with BMWs, Mercedes-Benzes as well as Toyotas, Hondas, Nissans and other cult favourites with a Japanese heritage.
“In recent years we have also seen seriously exotic cars entered, and in Halls 5 and 6 there will be a large contingent of Porsches and other supercars” says Calisto.
Chief organiser of the German vs Jap contingent is Dawood Hoosein of Southside Crew, who reports that this year’s event will see a re-shuffle of some of the big participation events being held for the more modern classics.
“This year we will have our competition for the car with the lowest ride-height held on the Saturday, while on the Sunday we will be running our traditional Dyno competition for the most powerful car,” says Hoosein.
“We are also hosting a media day on the Friday, so that photographers can get the opportunity to get shots of the cars without being hampered by thousands of spectators. Bonafide media representatives wishing to get accreditation for the Friday should visit the Southside Crew website for more details or our Facebook page.
Paulo Calisto says he is gratified by the continued support he has received from the classic car fraternity since he held his first Classic Car Show back in 2012. “Since that time, we have become known as hosting one of the biggest collections of American muscle cars that you will see anywhere. We have always attracted a hard-core of enthusiasts owning cars from the 1950s such as the 1955, ’56 and ’57 Chevies, and also the more obscure muscle cars like Oldsmobile 442s, Dodge Challengers and the like.
“We have also been fortunate over the years to attract a huge variety of American pick-ups ranging from the 1930s through to the mid-1970s, and it is fascinating to compare the various eras of pick-ups, which even today are so much part of the American car scene.
“We also attract very rare examples of British and European classics. We are one of the few shows where Ford Taunus cars are common, for example, which is a German line of cars that existed in Germany in the 1960s as that country’s version of the Ford Cortina.”
This year the two-day event will see special cars housed overnight in Halls 5 and 6 under special security arrangements. The special cars in these halls will be quite breath-taking in their presentation and will range from more traditional classics to modern classics of the future, with hugely expensive paint jobs, body kits and performance enhancements.
There are also some special anniversaries being celebrated amongst the classic and performance car fraternities. The Ford Mustang turns 60 this year, and spectators can expect a large turn-out of Mustangs, both classic and modern. Since 2015 Ford Mustangs have been for sale in South Africa in right-hand-drive form, and the modern Mustangs have developed a sub-cult of their own on the South African motoring scene, with many modified examples continuing the legend that was started way back in April 1964 in America.
The interest in late-model cult cars in the German vs Jap segment has been astounding in recent years. The organisers have certain rules for admitting cars to the general display fields surrounding Halls 5 and 6 at Nasrec and one of them is that all cars to qualify for the German vs Jap event should have lowered suspension and a set of specialised aftermarket wheels.
As for the more dedicated enthusiasts showing their comprehensively re-worked cars, the sky is the limit as far as modifications are concerned. Or maybe that should be amended to the “tarmac is the limit” in the case of the cars entered for the increasingly popular low ride-height competition, known as the “Limbo”.
Entrants for this year’s Limbo are said to be going to extreme lengths to achieve a “how-low-can-you go” ride height. Methods used in past years have included lowering tyre pressures to near-zero and packing the entered cars with as many people as possible to get the roof height dropped to ground zero!
The Classic Car Show, in conjunction with the German vs Jap show-within-a-show, has fast reached the status as one of the most popular car shows in the country. Tickets are available from Computicket with one-day prices ranging from R30 for children to R100 for adults.
