Live From Cars and Coffee Charlotte, August 2nd

On Saturday August 2nd we drove up to Charlotte NC in the comfy #1 selling mid size car in the US, our 2011 Toyota Camry to hang out with hundreds of car fanatics at the monthly get-together known as Cars and Coffee.  This event is held on the first Saturday of the month in the Queen City of NC (not to be confused with the Queen City of Ohio, Cincinnati) at Mattie's Diner, next to the Music Factory music concert venue. For August the weather was unusually cool, overcast, some fog, and just a few sprinkles. There was plenty of parking, plenty of cars, and we have plenty o'photos on our Flickr website at this link:  NMS C&C Photo Page on Flickr

Some highlights include the following:

 This is the brand new Porsche SUV called the Macan. Smaller than their Cayenne, a bit cheaper, I'm going to predict they sell a ton of these bad boys.

 Ferrari 458 Italia, courtesy of Maserati of Charlotte, which explains the big Maserati trident on the door!

 Plymouth Superbird!

 Not one, not two, but THREE red Lotus Esprits all together!

 BMW, let me know if I'm wrong, but I think it's a model 2002. That's one of their classic model numbers, not the year it was made.

 You have to like a car show with a sense of humor! Here we have a lowered Miata parked as far under this jacked up pickup truck as possible. This side angle was pretty cool, but my favorite shot is the next one from head on to the Miata!

 That's about the biggest and smallest cars we saw today.

 This is some new model from Lexus. Lexus I'm sure makes nice cars. They are the fancy version of Toyotas. The grill makes me not want to ever think about buying a Lexus.  I really liked the movie "Predator" with Arnold, but I do not want to own a car that reminds me of the alien hunter bad guy in the movie.

 Not one, not two, but....uh, I mean TWO Nissan 300Zs!

 When was the last time you saw an Audi Quattro that was in good shape like this nice one? When was the last time you even saw one of these at all?  For me, probably 20 years ago.

 This is a photo of a circle of the crowd gathered around the one and only Lamborghini we saw. It just seemed funny in the midst of this huge crowd to find a circle formed around this white car.  We later saw it out on the street driving around, and I can confirm that it goes from 0 to FAST very quickly.

 Porsche made the 914 two seater with either a 4 cylinder or 6 cylinder. In Europe I believe they were badged as VWs, so that helps explain all this lettering to explain what it is.

 Ah HA!  There was one FIAT that we saw, this nice condition spider.

 This model is a Jeepster, but judging by the big red W's on the wheels and the steering wheel, I guess it was made by Willys.

 Who wouldn't want a cool V8 badge like this in front of their grille?

 Back to the Superbird.  The front end had various body panels in multiple colors.  I don't know why.

 How about a customized old Pontiac? Lots of detail and cool stuff on this one.

 This Prowler showed up, and even though I don't like gold, I like Prowlers. Let's zoom in on one of the wheels to check out something. Notice the 20 inchers in back and 17 inch wheels up front?

All four wheels had these little grenade valve covers.

As we were about to leave, I remembered to get at least one shot of this VW Beetle parked right in front of our mighty Camry. Looks like they not only lowered it, but also chopped it a little bit too!