For the last 11 years the Gilmore Museum has held the Deutsche Marques all German Car Show. They invite owners of Porsche, BMW, Audi, Volkswagen and Mercedes-Benz cars to attend. This year BMW had the most cars at 33%, Porsche had the second most cars at 25%, Volkswagen and Mercedes-Benz both at 14% and Audi with 13%. In total of 568 cars were entered in the car show, with many more cars in the outside parking lot.

The Southeast Michigan PCA members met at Zingerman’s Roadhouse at 2:00 pm on Friday July 7th for the caravan to Kalamazoo. We had eight cars in total and Lucas Phan lead the group on a back roads tour to the hotel. A few members decided to travel to the hotel on their own and met up with the group later. I was the sweeper and it was great that Lucas was able to keep the group together for the entire caravan. Thanks to Chris Bohr, who couldn’t make the trip, for planning the backroad route.

We all met at the Latitude 42 restaurant for drinks, dinner and conversation. The food and service were great and everyone had a good time. Saturday morning we all gathered in the hotel lobby for the continental breakfast and after caravan over to the Gilmore for the Deutsche Marques Car Show. Unfortunately, due to the traffic lights in Kalamazoo we got split up, but all of us made it to the event safely.

There was so much to see, with the hundreds of cars that showed up for the event plus all the vintage cars on display in the Gilmore the museum buildings. You could spend all day just touring the different Gilmore Museum buildings and seeing all the vintage cars on display, then you go outside and there where Porsches and BMWs everywhere. It was a great event that I hope the club continues to attend, hopefully we can get Porsches to outnumber BMWs in the future.