Waterfest is the largest VW/Audi Car Show and Motorsport event in North America, and the second largest of its kind in the world. Waterfest, now in its 23rd year, is a two-day event held at Raceway Park in Englishtown, New Jersey (a common New England auto enthusiast event location). It's a great opportunity for enthusiasts in the VW community to get together and showcase their vehicles, and for anyone willing to participate in events like autocrossing, drag racing and show car events. It's also an opportunity for vendors to get out and interact with the community.
Waterfest is a yearly event and this year’s show featured several activities including a show car, drag racing, an autocross layout, and sound off and Dyno tuning offered by several vendors. Each year some 120 sponsors and vendors attend the event and well over 20,000 enthusiasts pack the raceway to share experiences, showcase rides, and see what’s new to the market. Unfortunately, timing was a bit of an issue for us this year as we were also hosting a cars and coffee event at our own facility, so we did not sponsor this year, but rest assured we will be back for 2018. Being the resident VW Catalog manager, I could not pass up the opportunity to head down to New Jersey and see what was in store for this years show, so me a few of our staff headed down. A daunting two and half hour drive down I-95 with photographer in tow, we were excited to enjoy the day and see some crazy VDubs.
While we were down, we also got to meet with some of our vendors and our good friends from 034 Motorsport. We have been excited to work with them on several projects and knowing their sales director and order manager would be attending, we took the time to catch up and see what was new. I also got the opportunity to meet with representatives from Liqui Moly who showcased some of their new treatments and fluids and discussed adding more of their line to our catalog offering.
Some of the vendor booths this year were insane and it was great to see several vendors offering some on-the-spot diagnostics and dyno tuning as part of the product line ups. Also having open autocrossing available to anyone interested was awesome to see.
We have put together a small gallery of our time at Waterfest on our Facebook album and wanted to share some of the cool images we snagged from the day. We will be sure to be back for 2018 and show our support for the VW community. If you'd like to view more photos of the event, please check out the full album here.
