The 2022 Highlands Motoring Festival has come and gone once again, but not without drawing in thousands of participants to join in on the festivities.
The festival, which celebrated its 15th year, was first conceptualized in 2006 and by 2007 it had its grand debut featuring a total of 114 cars.
“It was brought up in 2006 at a Rotary meeting,” Motoring Festival board member Steve Ham said. “Some guys stayed around afterwards and got to talk and so the first one was in 2007.”
The festival, which is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, is completely staffed by volunteers and all proceeds are donated to three local Highlands charities, which are the Literacy and Learning Center, REACH of Macon County and the Community Care Clinic of Highlands.
“It’s all volunteers, nobody’s ever been paid anything and we’re a nonprofit 501(c)(3),” Ham said. “We give all the money to charity, and so by giving a bunch of money to the local charities, the town board gives us the park for no charge. It’s kind of a unique situation, but of course Highlands is unique so, what else do you expect?”
This year’s festival saw great success with an estimated total of 2,500 individuals in attendance and hundreds of classic cars on display at the multiple car shows, driving tours, Main Street parade and award show.
“It was really quite phenomenal,” Ham said. “The quality of the cars was excellent. They drew a lot of people, a lot of first time Highlands visitors, many people discovered Highlands because of the opportunity to see this unique display of Porsche racing cars and special low production cars, and many other kinds of cars besides Porsches. I think we gave out a total of 34 awards. Our best of show, which I guess would be the poster child for the festival, is a 1965 Aston Martin DB5. And it’s instantly recognizable if you’re a James Bond fan, because it’s the James Bond Aston Martin. But, this particular one is beautifully preserved and immaculate. So, it won best of show over some pretty tough competition.”
All of the 85 cars that participated in the Saturday car show required an invitation from the festival’s selection committee in order to attend. The Sunday car show, known as High Octane, did not require an invitation and boasted 125 cars on display, bringing in a crowd of around 800 people.
Along with the weekend car shows, which according to Ham is, by attendance alone, one of the most popular aspects of the festival, the festival’s driving tours also drew in a long list of participants.
“The Saturday ‘Cars in the Park’ car show, just by pure numbers, has to be our most popular and is really what draws people to come to the show in the first place,” Ham said. “But if we look at registration of our ‘One Lap of the Mountains’ driving tours, we make them available in February and they’re usually sold out within a week or two. And this year we accommodated 125 cars in two days of driving tours. And these tours go to distant locations up in the mountains. It’s really all about the driving experience and the camaraderie. These classic car people enjoy hanging out with each other, so they enjoy caravanning.”
In addition to the 125 classic cars participating in the driving tours, the festival included a special invitational tour featuring 25 Porsches that was exclusively reserved for customers and VIP guests of the festival’ major corporate sponsors, Porsche of North America and Flow Automotive of Asheville.
This year the festival also included new events for the first time ever, such as a movie night in the park, in collaboration with the Performing Arts Center, and a charity car wash that raised around $800 in donations.
“For the first time ever, we did a movie night in the park,’’ Ham said. “The Performing Arts Center reached out to us and wanted to host an event, so on Thursday night we did a movie night in the park with the movie called Cannonball Run. Which is a goofy thing with all kinds of Hollywood celebrities from the 80s. But, that movie was inspired by an actual cross country race in 1975 and we had two of the participants of that actual race, Bill Warner, the founder of Amelia Island Concours, and Jack Mae who goes by the name cannonball Jack, because he won that initial event with his Ferrari. We had them do a panel discussion for 30 minutes and then we showed the movie. And that was well received by our audience. I’d say we had 200 people in there for that.”
Overall, according to Ham, this year’s festival exceeded expectations. He said that next year, the organization plans to work closer with the Highlands Police Department to improve and refine safety precautions.
“We had a massive parade on Friday night, and it exceeded our expectations. We expected about 60 cars and we had well over 100 cars show up to be in the parade. But, we’ve been doing this for about three or four years, and the community has gotten to where they expect us a little bit. They were all out there with folding chairs and blankets and not quite like Christmas but almost like the Christmas parade. So, we’re working with the Highlands police department right now to improve the safety of that event. Because it exceeded our expectations and it needs to be refined a little bit for its new size.”
The festival is always in need of more help and asks anyone who may be interested in volunteering to contact them via their website highlandsmotoringfestival.com/contact.
“We’re always looking for volunteers to help with this event,” Ham said. “There seems to be a feeling around Highlands that this is a car club, and it is not. It’s a community effort and we’re always seeking volunteers and they can contact us through the information contact on our website.”
- By Kaylee Cook