:?:
Well, the show n’ shine overall was a somewhat lukewarm success yesterday. We only had about 60 cars in the show this year, which is actually down a bit from last year. And we had a lot more space cordoned off compared to last year. Two groups that we were expecting way more cars from were the Calgary Z Club and the NECC. Calgary only brought 3 or 4, and NECC was somewhere around the same (Aaron’s 240SX, and a couple Spec-Vs, were there any others there that I missed?). I have a funny suspicion the Stanley Cup playoffs were part of the reason we only saw a few Calgarians make the trip yesterday.
But what happened to all the NECC cars that were going to show up? Only Aaron and a couple other guys actually made it.
The good news is we raised ~ $600 for the charity (Rainbow Society for Kids).
The new judging format and categories were put to the test. There weren’t any problems with the 300ZX and 350Z categories, but a couple mix-ups occurred with the 240SX class, and the Datsuns.
The problems were as follows:
- we only had one modified 240Z, and only one modified Datsun non-Z. So we had to put them together.
- we weren’t expecting any non-modified 240SX/180SX/Silvias to show up (as per our original meeting with Andy, Aaron, Gord and myself), but a stock 240SX was there and was unfortunately moved into the modified 240SX class instead of the daily-driver Nissan Non-Z class, and somehow was declared the winner of 240SX modified.
- no modified Nissan Non-Zs were entered (which was the class for Sentras, NX2000s, 200SXs, etc.), so that trophy would’ve been left unused. So it was decided in order to fix the first mistake, we went back to the modified 240SX judging sheets and ended up awarding the Nissan Non-Z modified to that class. However, I think there was a mix-up again and it went to the wrong car (I have a theory with what went wrong and I think it had to do with how that judging team filled out the score sheets). The short version: Aaron should’ve won!!
I think I will make the following recommendations for next year:
- keep the five Z Car daily-driver classes the same (these are the tried and true that the Z club has always had and always worked).
- keep the 300ZX (Z31 & Z32 combined) street modified class
- keep the 350Z/G35 street modified class
- combine the Datsun 240Z/260Z/280Z, 280ZX, and Datsun Non-Z street modified into ONE class (there just aren’t enough cars in this kind of category)
- combine the 240SX/180SX/Silvia and Nissan Non-Z (sentras, 200SX< NX, etc.) daily driver into ONE class.
- combine the 240SX/180SX/Silvia and Nissan Non-Z street modified into ONE class.
The above makes TEN classes.
The only one I’m left not sure about what to do with is the Datsun non-Z daily driver. We only had ONE car in this category yesterday. (Bill Money’s blue Datsun 1600? I think). We may have to either combine it with 240Z daily driver, or combine Datsun non-Z street modified and daily driver into ONE, since we just don’t have many of either.
Another thing we may have to do is have some sort of pre-registration prior to the show that requires a minimum of at least TWO entries in each class in order for the class to exist. We were really lacking in the number of Datsun and Nissan non-Zs yesterday unfortunately.
Also, hopefully next year we can have better representation from NECC on the judging teams. If I’m not mistaken Aaron was the only one from NECC that was on a judging team. Having the NECC more involved in more categories may have helped avoid the screw-ups we had yesterday with the 240SX category.
Anyways for those of you that made it out to participate and spectate, thank you on behalf of myself and the Edmonton Z Car Club for showing your support. And I hope to see you out again next year and we can see things improve and continue to change for the better.
Jason
P.S. My car won the 300ZX street-modified category! 
(I think I owe Aaron a beer!)[/b]
