Peter must be an American friend. While it had rained heavily the day before, the participants at the 31st "American Live" meeting were greeted by plenty of sunshine. This quickly put everyone in a good mood, which was only somewhat dampened by the cool breeze. But you could warm up by the bubbling eight-cylinder engine or in the closed festival restaurant or have a coffee in the lee.
In any case, the weather did nothing to deter the crowds - the organizer estimated 20,000 visitors and 2,500 classic cars - and only very few convertible drivers were deterred from open-top driving.
A touch of Detroit
The meeting was held for the first time in Luterbach (in the canton of Solothurn) on the Borregaard site (formerly Cellulose Attisholz), an environment with an industrial flair almost reminiscent of Detroit. Between containers, factory buildings and piles of gravel, hundreds of American vehicles were lined up in two collection pools, neatly separated into classic cars and newer vehicles (from 1985 onwards).
International
Anyone looking at the license plates of the road cruisers was amazed at the internationality of the participants - Germany, Italy, Austria and France could be read on the license plates alongside Switzerland, which was logically the most strongly represented country. And quite a few also drove up with American plates, but this was more for show, because it just looks good.
The pearls in the crowd
With so many vehicles, the special pieces quickly disappear in the masses. Only those who took the trouble to walk through the columns with a keen eye discovered the rarities that are rarely seen, such as a Corvair Monza with a turbo engine, the three Excaliburs or vehicles from Nash and Studebaker.
The majority were the popular pony cars, but also the many limousines and convertibles of the sixties and seventies. Pre-war Americans were just as much the exception as small-series sports cars from the American plastics era.
Party atmosphere
The (very) loud B-Shakers and around 40 sales stands, which offered food and drinks as well as many other things, provided a great atmosphere. However, those who wanted to eat and drink had to be patient. Before enjoying a hot coffee or hot dog, there were often long queues.
Manifold queues
Snakes were indeed a bit of an issue in Luterbach, and not just as namesakes for cars like the Cobra. The entrance/exit proved to be a bottleneck and considerable traffic jams formed early on, which probably also caused displeasure among uninvolved passers-by from time to time.
The situation was even more nerve-wracking in the evening when people wanted to leave. Participants reported that it took them over half an hour to drive the 400 meters to the main road. In this respect, the previous location with several entrances and exits was better suited. But perhaps the organizers were also surprised by the rush? After all, who would have expected that word-of-mouth advertising would lead to around 20,000 visitors with practically no large-scale advertising?
Always something new
In contrast to the Europeans, who often relied on model consistency - the VW Beetle, for example, only changed marginally from year to year - the Americans offered more or less renewed models from year to year. Between the major model changes, which took place every two to four years, the chrome decoration, radiator grille design, air inlets/outlets or the design of the headlights changed, along with adjustments to the equipment option list, so that the new model could be announced with much fanfare every year.
The American Live meeting offered the ideal opportunity to follow these successive model changes on a tour of the vehicle lines. There were almost complete vintage selections of some models on display, but of course in-depth knowledge was required if all the cars were to be correctly classified by year and type.
We tried to document this diversity in Luterbach and show the constantly changing faces of the cars in a specially created picture gallery.
At this point, we would also like to invite our readers to comment, as everyone perceives such a large-scale event differently. So write your own impressions in the comments field, we look forward to it!
