Who Let The Dogs Out?
Hi Friends!
If you’ve been reading this newsletter for a while now, you probably remember back to last summer when we reported some things about Monterey Car Week that definitely caused a little bit of controversy. Although, there were certainly people that were angry with us, that did turn into an open conversation that moved well beyond Northern California in August and into several pretty positive things overall. It went from general frustrations that we were hearing from our clients about the direction that Monterey was taking, to frustrations that people were having with the other two major US car weeks, to what people actually liked about all three and then finally to what people wished was better across the board.
As many of you also know, Arizona Car Week, has been on a bit of a downslide over the last couple of years. We all saw the doomsday headlines in major newspapers as well as on the covers of notable publications within this industry, prognosticating the end of what has not only been a pretty important set of events for this hobby, but for the economy in the Phoenix area (where we are headquartered) overall.
The fact is, Arizona Car Week isn’t just about a bunch of nice cars changing hands at the various auctions around town that third week of January. It’s also a major apparatus which gets potholes fixed, puts schoolbooks on children’s desks and Thanksgiving turkeys on the tables of those who may not be fortunate enough to be able to acquire those any other way. Obviously, this is a pretty important thing to all of us down here in the desert not only financially, but it’s a real part of our identity as a community too.
Armed with the knowledge that we acquired through conversations with you guys, we started talking to local business leaders, municipalities, car collectors, enthusiasts and anybody else who would lend us their ear. Then we got to work.
The main thing that you guys told us you didn’t like about Arizona Car Week was its lack of events outside of the auctions. You told us that with the ease of online bidding, without a deeper selection of events, there was little to no incentive to make the trip.
Second, you also told us that single companies or organizations consolidating all events under their proverbial umbrellas and controlling every component of a car week was also unappealing.
These were the first two areas we decided to tackle for 2025’s installment of Arizona Car Week. First thing we needed to do was identify what kind of events were needed, how many and then our goal was to try to get as many different people involved as possible, in order to minimize the consolidation effect. As I wrote in a guest column for InBusiness Magazine a few years ago, Car Week here in the valley remains a top five tax draw annually, so therefore we agreed with you guys, that it’s far too big and far too important to be owned by one single entity. This meant that we need to get as many people involved, creating things that they can be proud of year in and year out and taking ownership of their own part of Car Week. Of course, this mentality is always met with at least some resistance from certain types of business leaders and more specifically, a couple of municipalities here (I will write about some of these frustrations in a future newsletter), but overall, we feel that this is one of those scenarios where if one person wins, everybody else does too, so that’s the game plan that we’re taking into this.
One of the other major complaints that everybody (very vocally) has with Monterey is that their standard 50+ event calendar is too much. The general consensus that we received was that 25 to 35 events was considered to be more optimal. Although, we were all pretty aware that it was going to be difficult to impossible to get into that range this quickly, we did set our goals at a fairly lofty 20 to 25 total events for this upcoming January and as of right now, we’ve got 17 posted (some new, some existing) on the website we created as a central landing place for all of this (arizonacarweek.org) and are currently tracking a total of 22 at the time of writing this.
With a little over 4 weeks remaining before Car Week’s January 17th kickoff, we expect that number to remain a little bit fluid. It’s just as likely that more come out of the woodwork as it is that some may fall off. For example, Euro Experience Tortilla Flats Tour went from concept to reality in only a few days time, as it was an answer for another event that fell off the calendar. Candidly, Tortilla Flats Tour is something WAY cooler anyway, so as usual things tend to work out the way they’re supposed to. At least for now.
We’re also already tracking at least three more new events for 2026 as well and we fully intend to try to get into that 25 to 35 event range by then.
Anyway, this is obviously been quite an undertaking, so over the next couple of weeks I’ll be providing a pretty frank behind the scenes look at what it’s taken to get to this point so far and what happens and we get closer to that time. I’ll share victories as well as frustrations and we’ll kind of see where we end up on Sunday, January 26th when Arizona Car Week 2025 comes to a close together. Considering that you guys kind of helped to inspire this, the least I can do is take you along for the ride.
Of course, as always, if there’s anything that you would like me to write about or if there’s any questions you want me to answer along the way, feel free to drop me an email or send me a message on social media.
It’s going to be an interesting month…..
That’s it for this week…
Darin Roberge