Brightoners got a chance to get their German on last weekend, with the advent of the first annual Kafers and Krauts auto show on Sixth Street.
Dozens of Volkswagens from the 1950s through the present day were on display at the show; sedans, convertibles, microbuses and pickups, from full on custom to showroom stock. Show organizer, long-time VW enthusiast and Infamous Aircooled VW club founder Tim Adams took on a hefty challenge with the show, with Infamous hosting the event just a year after their inception. Sixth months after starting the club, show plans began to take shape.
“I started planning and talking about the show in November,” Adams said, during a break at Saturday’s event. “We really started putting things on paper in January, and had fliers and everything out in February.”
Putting on a large event may have been daunting from a logistical standpoint, but financially the show worked out better than the club originally anticipated, thanks to some sponsorship.
“It’s wasn’t too bad,” Adams said. “Obviously, a lot has been donated from sponsorships like North Valley Volkswagen and Brighton Auto Body to help promote it. The only other expense was advertising. It was better than I thought it would be.”
The club also sold T-shirts to offset costs and replenish coffers for next year’s expenses. It’s a handy way to support a club that charges no set membership fees for members. Another bit of synergy emerged when Adams discovered Lauer Krauts, the Sixth Street eatery that co-sponsored the event.
“A co-worker of mine told me about Lauer Krauts, and how it was on Diners, Drive-ins and Dives,” Adams said. “Then we came over here one day for lunch, and everything was Volkswagen, and I thought, ‘This is my hangout, this is where I’m going to be every weekend.” Once we started planning the show, this is where we had our club meetings, and when we discussed it, they wanted to have a show too, so we partnered up with them.””
Represented in the show were club rides from Infamous Aircooled, Split Window Syndicate, KDP and vendors Air Cooled Clinic, Painter’s Grinding and NuVintage, all suppliers of all things VW. The VW community is close-knit in the Denver metro area, and that camaraderie is something Infamous is looking to expand, with new faces as the club grows. Toward that end, joining up is easy, and access to the club on the Internet a simple matter of point and click.
“It’s no dues, none of that,” Adams explained. “We just want to get together, have fun and enjoy the cars and the people.”