23-04-2025
Knysna Motor Show goes Cars@Coffee this weekend
'An important decision is that there will be no admission charge for participants and the public on Sunday. However, we will request owners who want to display their cars to make a voluntary donation for the benefit of Rotary.
'The event will again be held on Thesen Island, surrounded by the Knysna Estuary, an ideal heritage backdrop.
'The Cars@Coffee idea took hold in 2023 when we arranged to host a Cars@Coffee meeting on the Wilderness Common, and straight away our attendance figures more than doubled to 74 cars.
'We realised there is huge interest for informal get-togethers that complement a formal car show. This year we are sending out the word to a broader audience in the Western and Southern Cape, and we also hope to attract cars from as far afield as Cape Town and Port Elizabeth.'
Barendse said in the days of the Knysna Motor Show it was necessary to raise meaningful sponsorship and charge a substantial public entry fee to defray the costs of staging the show and generate a surplus for distribution to selected charities.
'By making Cars@Coffee an informal voluntary gathering we aren't faced with those organisational challenges. Of course all the coffee shops and breakfast outlets benefit from the increase in turnover, while Knysna Rotary is delighted to be tasked with the collection of donations and administering the contributions to appropriate beneficiaries.'
Barendse said one of the motivating ideas behind Cars@Coffee get-togethers over the past two years has been to expand the Love of Cars beyond the confines of the traditional classic car movement.
'Traditional club events tend to involve the same cars and owners each month. But as we moved Cars@Coffee meets out of town to Wilderness and Plettenberg Bay we found we had a much more diverse gathering.
'For instance, at three Cars@Coffee meets we had cars ranging from a 100-year-old Ford Model T to the very latest Aston Martin Vanquish. Since then we have had motorcycles ranging from classic Vespas to the latest Ducatis joining us.'
Interested spectators on Sunday can expect a feast of automotive machinery that will cover the 20th century spectrum of time and marques plus the best of the modern era.
