Lovely Moto Guzzi at last year’s Barber Festival.
Summer’s here, which means it’s time to plan for fall and the 8th Annual Barber Vintage Festival at the Barber Vintage Motorsports Park Oct. 12-14, 2012. There really aren’t enough superlatives to describe this event or its locale, home to the world-famous Barber Vintage Motorsports Museum. Launched in 2005, the Barber Vintage Festival is the unofficial season-ending event on the vintage calendar and the premier vintage motorcycle event in the country.
Last year’s festival was blessed with unbelievably perfect weather and a revved up activity calendar, which combined to produce record crowds — easily 50,000 people — over the event’s three days. In previous years, things didn’t really get moving till Saturday, but last year it felt like somebody let the genie out of the bottle, because the festival was in full swing first thing Friday morning. The way this event keeps growing, you can bet there will be even more going on this year than ever before, if that’s really possible.
And evidently it is, because in addition to the regular roster of happenings like vintage AHRMA racing, a killer swap meet, a Saturday vintage bike auction, tech seminars, the American Motordrome Co. Wall of Death motorcycle stunt show, the Race of the Century for motorcycles 100 years old and older, the Aeroshell Aerobatic Team, and of course the Motorcycle Classics/Dairyland Cycle Barber Vintage Motorcycle Show, we’ve heard rumors of a planned Motogiro on Thursday before the festival officially opens. Vintage Triumphs will hold center stage at the Motorcycle Classics tent as the featured marque in our show, and Triumph Motorcycles is the official sponsor of the Barber Vintage Festival, which means the Triumph demo van should be on hand with free rides.
Even with all that, there are still a few vintage bike fans who haven’t taken in this great weekend, so for the third year in a row we’ve teamed up with Barber to give away a pair of tickets to the Vintage Festival. The winners — it’s a prize meant for two — will get a pair of passes to the 8th Annual Barber Vintage Festival, plus weekend passes to the Barber Vintage Motorsports Museum, two nights lodging and front row tickets to the Barber classic bike auction, not to mention cool swag like festival T-shirts and caps. Getting there is your responsibility, but if you’re our winner, once you’re there you’ll be pretty much taken care of for the entire weekend. Pretty sweet deal if you ask us. Point your browser to the 2012 Barber Vintage Festival Sweepstakes and sign up now.
