Full Weekend, Record Attendance Highlight Latest Fairbury Car Show

FAIRBURY, Neb. - For the past dozen years, folks have flocked to Fairbury on the second weekend of September for the annual Fairbury Car Show, organized by the City Museum. This weekend, in the 13th annual version of the event, vehicles of all different makes, models, colors and eras filled the streets around downtown Fairbury – more than 230 vehicles, in total.   

“That’s more than what we’ve ever had by 20-plus cars. The best years were post-COVID when everyone was just itching to get out, but we’ve done very well this year getting everyone to come in," said John Ebke, who's been a member of the car show's organizing committee for the last half dozen years. "I think everyone really appreciated the weather and it’s been a growing event for a long time.” 

Most of the vehicles had four wheels, some had two. Some looked like they wouldn’t run well on land; some looked like they wouldn’t run well at all. There were some cars from the 60s, 70s, and 80s and some from the 2010s – and even one from the 1910s.   

But this event is about more than just the cars, bikes and trucks that filled the parking spots around the main square: it’s about the people behind those vehicles. People like Jill from Geneva, who worked to retrofit the car her dad first bought her when she was a kid in 1972. Or John from Marysville, Kansas, who is part of a crew of five groups who have brought their cars up to Fairbury for the past four years. Or Shane from Beatrice, whose motorcycle won one of the event’s custom-made trophies. 

Epke and the other volunteers, clad in custom orange shirts, patrol the grounds, separating all the vehicles into categories and evaluating them based on criteria like originality and quality. By the end of the afternoon Sunday, the top vehicles in each classification took home one of this year's unique awards: metalwork made into the shape of the state of Nebraska.

“I think that’s one of the things people appreciate because certainly we could just spend our money buying trophies, but we custom make ours and that sets us apart," Epke said.

Shane’s motorcycle was awarded "best paint and body" in its classification, and his son Jesse gleefully displayed the chrome Nebraska cut-out his family's bike won as they prepared to leave town Sunday afternoon. Jesse will eventually inherit the decorated bike from Shane just as Shane received it from his father before him.   

When this event began more than a decade ago, the car show was not only the main event, it was the only event. Now, it’s a full weekend’s worth of activity, making this easily one of the busiest few days of the year in the city. There was live music and German food on Friday night at On the Bricks. On Saturday evening, a group of the cars paraded through Fairbury, swinging up past the retirement home and apartments on the north side. All that built into a full day of activity on Sunday, including the weekend's marquee event.

And that kind of full weekend is exactly what Ebke and his team envision for this event in the future: a callback to Fairbury's popular, successful German Fest weekends in years past.

“I want it to be a very city-oriented thing where we care about the people that are in our city, and try and draw in things that are not car show-related, but are more general interest: stuff for kids, stuff for people that don’t care about cars. Cars are wonderful, that’s part of what we’re here for, but in reality we’re working now to draw in the general public and show them it’s more than just a car show – it can be a true community event.”  

With the trophies awarded and the events concluded, the cars loudly announced their departures from the downtown square, with sights set on returning to Fairbury for the fourteenth edition of this event next fall.