Volkswagen has one of the strongest fan bases in all the car industry. That is why I was mostly drawn to the brand as a young high schooler. I was longing for community to be apart of. A group of people that would help someone with little knowledge, like myself, learn the Volkswagen craft. The community was great to me, taking a young High School idiot under their wing to learn the trade. During the 6 or so years I was involved with community, I never made it to a big national car show. Since the community is so large, national meet ups are sacred ground for a Volkswagen fan. I always dreamed about making it to H20i in Ocean City, MD or Wookies in the Woods in Fontana, NC. They were simply too far away from my hometown of Milwaukee, WI. Since it is a car show, I would like to drive my car, that means taking off even more time to account for travel. After graduating from school in December 2020, I have relocated to Florida. Now Florida, is an interesting place. Perfect temperatures, all year long. In the northern states, car show season usually starts in May and ends in September, 5 short months. Now what do all the car enthusiasts do for the other 7 or so months? They either travel to Florida or California to have events. Now I was finally in position to visit a national VW event.

Eurotripper is one of the biggest Volkswagen shows put on in the United States. Volkswagen sponsors the event. It is held in Fort Meyers, FL at the Boston Red Sox spring training facility. Fort Meyers only being 4 hours away from me, I knew I was not going to miss this opportunity. Not even being in town 3 minutes and I saw a Cayman GT-4 and a C63 AMG doing under bridge pulls, I knew I was in the right place.

We checked into the hotel before heading to the show. The hotel parking lot was car show in itself. Almost every spot was filled with some sort of European car. Almost every car had a northern state license plate. Meaning almost everybody was using this car show as a vacation away from the ferocious polar vortex which was pounding the north at the moment.

The car positioned at the entrance of the show set a precedence of what was to follow. A Mercedes Unimog with a camper conversion, I never saw anything like it in my life. Walking through the show, I saw some dream cars of mine that I thought I would never see. I saw 3, $120k, 591 hp, Audi RS6 station wagons. 2 of which were in the must have color of Nardo Grey. Countless beautiful builds of MK3s and MK4s also were in attendance. A personal favorite of mine was the extremely rare MK2 Golf Country. This car came from the factory with a lift kit, bull bar, fog lights, and 4-wheel drive. This car also had a roof tent installed. I found out after that the owner has been staying in the tent on a cross country, socially distanced, trip. Very Cool.

One thing that did stick out to me about the show was the lack of electric cars. I know a car show would be the last place someone would expect to anything electric. The people that attend these shows, pride themselves on using 3 pedals and loud exhausts. It is sad to say though that electrics are the future. The Volkswagen group has always been very forward thinking, stemming back to the hippie era Beetle. When diesel gate happened, I know many lifelong Volkswagen fans who left the brand. The eGolf has been for sale in the US market since 2015. I did not see one at the show. Then again, the eGolf is a sad excuse for an electric car. With a high premium over the gas-powered variants, and only 125 miles of range, it would be hard to justify picking an egolf over a GTI.  Volkswagen corporate brought their new ID.4, their first electric car that one might consider picking up. With 250 miles of range and a starting price under 40k, the argument could be there.

I am just worried that Volkswagen is showing up late the show. Companies such as Tesla have taken the market area that VW used to inherit. VW understands this and with the launch of the retro bus styled ID.Buzz, hopefully they can bring some people back to the brand.

Finally going to a national Volkswagen car show was amazing. What I didn’t expect though was a strong feeling on Melancholy that overwhelmed me. It seemed to be the last of a dying breed of enthusiasts. These said enthusiasts will hold on as long as they can, but we are in the final stretch of the internal combustion engine. The car industry is going through the biggest metamorphosis since Carl Benz created the car in 1886, I am not sure which legacy brands will make it.