NWTC Car Show
A midwest edition of one of Americans' greatest loves.
For the best experience, I recommend viewing these images on a device larger than a phone.
We Americans wrap a lot of nostalgia up in our cars. I’ve had five of them in my lifetime. I can tell you the circumstances of how and why I came to own each of them. Though I loath how un-walkable cities are that we built around the automobile, I love a car show as much as the next person.
It’s impossible to think about American history without the automobile. Our national infrastructure is literally built for machines on wheels. American popular culture is saturated with themes of cars taking us away from our problems, or straight into happiness. If you’ve lived even a portion of your life in this country - you have memories tied a car, or three. I think those memories are what make car shows such popular events. Personal feelings tied to steel and an open road.
Today I attended a fundraiser car show hosted by a local technical school. I went to get some reference photos to use in my sketchbooks - and I got plenty of them. But the event was so large, with so many people that I couldn’t help but to also artfully capture the midwest edition of one of Americans’ greatest loves.
One of the signature characteristics of a car show is the bright vintage colors - especially red…..candy apple red. I chose to present this gallery in black and white because the colors on a screen, even with a bit of de-saturation, were overwhelming. As always, I’m most interested in the human element of photos. I think in this series, color places the focus squarely, and only on the autos - so I removed it.
Enjoy this small group of snaps. Let me know in the comments what vintage automobile bounces around in your memories.
If you like these photos, check out this post from 2025 about another American cultural trope - baseball.
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New issue releasing this month!
Great pictures Tania. I love that old T-Bird! I use to have a Wimbledon White 1964 model back when I was into old cars.