Now that's how you get car lovers in the Holiday spirit! After a fun Cars & Coffee on Saturday where the Marines were on hand to collect the hundreds of toys brought in by the Pantera club, Woodie club and the rest of the CnC regulars, Sunday was twice as fun. Motor4Toys 2010 was huge. An early morning drive up to the Topanga Mall with some Porsche guys went by quicker than anticipated so we got to spend a good two hours there before heading back down to HB for the annual Schnuerer Toys for Tots drive.
Dusty and the gang outdid themselves up at M4T, with somewhere north of 30,000 toys being collected to help those less fortunate celebrate the season. Besides the massive piles of toys for the needy kids, there were thousands of cars, trucks, motorcycles, ATVs, helicopters, boats, and other random vehicles on hand – proving that grown men (and women) still play with toys as well. It was great to see everybody, however briefly. After a couple of hours at M4T, we were back on the road for the OC.
Gerhard and Rosemarie Schnuerer have been doing a Toys for Tots drive at their Huntington Beach facility for several years now, and it's funny how a year can pass without seeing these folks and their cars, and it still feels like it was just yesterday that we were all together. This really feels like a family gathering, with Gerhard's collection of classic German machinery spilling out of the museum to allow everyone a chance to ride in these amazing bits of history. And let me tell you...you haven't lived until you've eaten Gulasch out of a Gulaschkanone - an actual German field kitchen trailer.
With silent auctions, raffles and live auctions, both events are more than mere car shows and toy drop offs. The Schnuerer event has a live band, free photos of partygoers during the day, TV car guy Dave Kunz as auctioneer, and everything from a chance to ride in a Patent-Motorwagen replica to an opportunity to take a new AMG Mercedes around the track if you're the high bidder.
The Motor4Toys event has numbers. Seeing a line of thirty, forty, even fifty Corvettes, 911s or Ferraris is breathtaking. Seeing the same thing repeated row after row after row for maybe thirty rows is amazing. And with that big of a crowd and the media attention it attracts, there are also quite a few celebrity cars and stars. Leno, Bruce Meyer, Fireball Tim, Dave Kunz and many others are always at this event, the single largest donator of toys from one group year after year.
A long day that sadly passed too soon, it's a great way to kick the Holidays into high gear.
Motor4Toys pics
Toys for Tots pics
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