Portland Cars and Coffee at World of Speed

After four months of private negotiations, and two months on hiatus, the original Portland Cars and Coffee has been relaunched at the World of Speed Museum in Wilsonville.

Staying true to our roots: “[The] goal for Cars & Coffee is to bring clubs, friends, family, enthusiasts, customers, etc together in a neutral territory…where they can enjoy cars they are passionate about, meet friends they’ve known for years, make new friends, and have fun in an environment that is not motivated by any dealership. …it’s not a competition and everyone is welcome at Cars & Coffee.” – founder Kevin (KAOSS)

Here is the website where you can get all the details, blog posts, and regular updates:
Portland Cars & Coffee | Every Saturday Morning @ 8am

Why World of Speed?
Because it’s awesome. But, beyond that completely unsubstantiated reason, it has the space we were looking for (we don’t really want to be managing a 500-700 car show every weekend), and World of Speed is a car-friendly landlord and business partner. Just like at Bridgeport, we outgrew the available space and handshake agreement with property management. And the gated lot at World of Speed creates a natural upper limit to the size of the event at 300 parking spaces. We don’t want it to grow any larger, for many reasons.

Every Saturday, all year long
We continue to meet every Saturday, rain or shine or snow. Yes even snow. Remember President's weekend in February 2014? There was a 911 on snow tires that drove to the gathering.

We Start At 8 AM, Not Before
The World of Speed parking lots are gated. Gates will not open for Cars and Coffee parking until 8 am. If you arrive early, lineup on the side of the street. Everyone you see entering and inside the parking lot before 8 am is “Ground Control” which is what we call our volunteers.

Featured Parking area
One benefit of World of Speed layout is the opportunity to showcase exotic and unique vehicles that originally were the centerpiece of the gathering. There is a separate parking lot at the front of the museum with 22 parking spaces. We plan to fill these spaces quickly at the start of every Saturday, and once they are full, then they are full.

Please note: Once the 22 spaces are full we will close the Featured area, so please show up early. If your car does not get put in the featured section please don’t take it personally, it’s not personal. We do ask that Featured cars are washed and cleaned.

What is a “Featured” vehicle?
Great question! Our goal with this section is to keep it dynamic and fresh. Much of the time the Featured section will be for exotics, yet we fully intend to have special weekends that trade exotics for a featured marque, car club, or perhaps a special gathering. It’s our intent to maintain flexibility in this Featured area in order to best represent the entire C&C community. We will continue to adjust and refine this definition over time.

Regular Parking Outside of the Featured Area
There are two regular parking lots at World of Speed. Lot 1 runs along the south side of their facility, and includes the loading docks. Lot 2 is directly south of the facility, behind the church next door. Both lots are open to participants, and the gates will open at 8am. If clubs or groups want to park together, then they should coordinate to enter as a group. There is no reserved parking or saving spaces.

Once both lots are full, there is plenty of free parking along the city streets. You are encouraged to show up early!

Oh, there will be coffee!
Inside World of Speed’s lobby, we’ll have access to bathrooms, chairs, tables, and a small coffee stand catered by Elephants Deli. During gorgeous weekends we plan to have coffee trucks on site to help make sure there’s enough coffee to keep everyone awake. We’ll have more room inside than we had at Starbucks in the winter, and there are picnic tables outside the front of World of Speed for those that want to just sit and take it all in when the weather’s nice.

Keeping It In Control
We have a crew of volunteers named Ground Control who help manage the event. They have lanyards and badges, and are fellow enthusiasts. They will help direct traffic flow within the parking lots, and answer general questions.

Yes, the police are watching
SW 95th is well known as a “speed trap” for the City of Wilsonville, so please watch your speed while arriving and departing. Yes, radar is in regular use along the road. Additionally we have partnered with the City of Wilsonville to provide visible law enforcement in the street outside the World of Speed as a deterrent to those who might think about immature behavior. Please don’t rev your engines, drop your clutch, slide out of the parking lot, burnout, or show everyone how awesome your driving skills are.

World of Speed is on private property and people will be asked to leave and not return if they can’t be respectful. The same goes if anyone does anything stupid or dangerous.

Housekeeping
Please park in designated parking stalls within the property. There are six designated disabled parking stalls, which will be monitored and enforced. And in the loading dock areas, you will quickly see how the vehicles are arranged on your first visit.

World of Speed
Although the World of Speed lobby will open at 8am for coffee and bathrooms, the actual museum portion will open at 9am during the summer. Admission tickets, annual memberships, and retail merchandise are available inside at their main counter in the lobby.

 

There are three great sources for information on the Portland Cars and Coffee gathering.

First is the website: Portland Cars & Coffee | Every Saturday Morning @ 8am
This is where the most current and detailed updates will be posted.

Second is the Facebook group: http://www.facebook.com/groups/PDXCandC/

Third is the World of Speed website: World of Speed Museum

Of course, the best source of information is to attend the gathering in person, and look for one of the volunteers wearing a Ground Control lanyard.

See you on Saturdays at the World of Speed museum!

 

What exactly is the "Featured" area and how do I park there?

Relaunch Weekend—Eye Candy was the theme
For our relaunch weekend we filled the Featured lot with unique, rare, and exotic vehicles. If you wanted to stick a label or theme on it, it could have been called Eye Candy.

From the beginning we have wanted the featured section to be dynamic and evolving, just as our gathering has been since the beginning in Jantzen Beach.

Going forward, the featured section will be ever changing and completely dynamic. On occasional weekends we will apply a theme to the featured section, such as cars manufactured prior to 19XX, or only German cars, or even only modified cars. Some of these theme weekends will be publicized, while other weekends they will be spontaneously announced on a dry-erase board at the entrance to the parking lot.

On weekends where is no theme for the featured section, it will likely default to unique, rare, and exotic vehicles like our relaunch weekend. Again, the intent is to keep the gathering fresh and dynamic, as well as to reflect the full community of enthusiasts.

We look forward to keeping things interesting, and more importantly, fun, as Portland Cars and Coffee continues to evolve.

 

For those who were not present on Relaunch Day, here is a list of the cars which were admitted into the Featured lot. The intent is to represent both the diversity and quality of what was driven to the World of Speed on our opening day. And going forward, this mix will constantly change. How will it change? Keep coming back and find out!

(And yes, there were more than 22 cars because we kept adding more when a space was available)

1932 Packard
1930’s Cadillac
’58 Corvette on custom running gear ($300k+ build)
Aston Martin Vanquish
Ferraris:
458 Italia x2
458 Speciale Aperta (first public display of this car!)
456
355 spider
512BBi
360 spider
430 spider
599
612
FF x2
Jaguar E-type
Lambo Huracan
Lambo Murcielago
Lambo Jalpa
Lotus Elise Cup R
McLaren 650S x1
McLaren MP4-12C x2
MBZ SLS x3 (two coupes, one roadster)
Noble M400
Panoz Esperante
Porsche GT3 x2
Rolls Royce x2
Viper ACR coupe x2

And this list cannot possibly include the other Astons, Audis, BMWs, Ferraris, Porsches, Mercedes, and all the other manufacturers that were represented by almost 400 other vehicles that showed up and parked in the regular lots for the first day at World of Speed.

 

We did our best to keep track of the numbers, so let’s run through them:

Gates opened at 8 am to a line of cars that we’re told was nearly to the freeway
By 8:45 am the Featured section was full
By 8:55 both Lot 1 and Lot 2 were full, so overflow went to street parking
By 9:15 some spots started opening up
Approximately 430 cars parked inside the lots
Approximately 600-700 people attended

We watched and we listened
We spent a lot of time listening to feedback and suggestions, and watching how things went. In just one weekend we learned a lot, and have made a list of adjustments that will be implemented immediately. These adjustments should make it so people know where to line up before the gates open, enter into the parking lots faster, and increase visibility when exiting.

Next Saturday should be even better!

 

This weekend is Memorial Day, and we want to give our respect to the enthusiasts whom have served our country. For this weekend, the Featured area is for members of all military branches - active, reserve, or retired. If you have served, then please identify yourself and you are welcome to park your ride in the Featured lot as long as there is space available.

Please note that we chose this theme to be in conjunction with the holiday weekend, to recognize all military service personnel, living or dead, active reserve or retired. The theme is NOT "Memorial Day" intentionally. We did this for two reasons: 1) We wanted to recognize those who have served, and waiting until Nov 11th for Veteran's Day is too long. 2) Demonstration that the Featured area is NOT just about exotics or rare cars. It is about the community of enthusiasts, as we have clearly stated since the beginning. There have been enough armchair quarterbacks and naysayers making assumptions, and it is our goal to continue proving them wrong through our actions. This weekend, we will salute all who have served our country, period. [My father served 22 years in the Navy, and so did both of my grandfathers]

 

Here are links to several online photo galleries from the first two weekends.


May 16th- Opening day
https://www.flickr.com/photos/braydenjoelphotography/sets/72157652581574140

https://www.flickr.com/photos/109428793@N05/sets/72157652608207760


May 23rd- All Military Service Personnel
https://www.flickr.com/photos/braydenjoelphotography/sets/72157653342972505

https://www.flickr.com/photos/126421366@N07/sets/72157651131768924

Even Doctor Dave showed up to check out the new location:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/131900529@N07/sets/72157651074907294

 

Photo gallery links for May 30th - sunny and warm

https://www.flickr.com/photos/the_stig63/sets/72157651396989014

We filled the Featured lot in 19 minutes.
The rest of the parking lots took about 45 minutes to fill.

Gert Boyle from Columbia Sportswear was chauffeured to the location by her daughter in the white Cadillac Eldorado Biarritz convertible.
Then Page showed up in his 918 Spyder.

It was a pretty good day, indeed!

 

And another gallery of photos from one of our regulars:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/braydenjoelphotography/sets/72157653719242646