4th Annual Barber Vintage Festival

Been promising yourself a trip to Alabama’s Barber Vintage Motorsports Museum but keep putting it off? Ignoring the fact you’ve missed seeing the most spectacular collection of classic motorcycles ever amassed in one place, or that you’ve missed checking out the world-class race track sitting in the museum’s backyard, you’ve also missed Barber’s big event of the year, the Barber Vintage Festival.

In addition to hosting Grand-Am and Porsche 250 auto racing (and a lot more), every October the track plays host to AHRMA’s season-ending races. That’s also when Barber holds the Vintage Festival, now entering its fourth year.

When the first Vintage Festival was held in 2005, Barber barely publicized it. Truth be told, they weren’t really sure what they were after, and the event was as much a fact-finding exercise as anything else.

Given the museum’s collection of classic street and race bikes, AHRMA racing was a natural. But the folks running Barber and the Barber track (officially called the Barber Motorsports Park and a separate legal entity to the museum) weren’t sure they really wanted to deal with throngs of bikers messing up the place.

Fortunately, better sense — and an obvious eye toward opportunity — prevailed. The first event was a smash hit, and the event’s grown steadily since, attendance mushrooming from around 5,000 the first year to more than 12,000 in 2006 and 2007.

And 2008 promises to be better than ever, with an expanded and gentrified swap meet area, a return of the Aeroshell Aerobatic Team, Rhett Rotten’s Wall of Death motorcycle stunt show, a benefit dinner, and of course all the AHRMA racing you can stuff into two days.