Bloomington Gold Corvette Show Moving to Champaign, IL in 2013

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Bloomington Gold Corvette Show Moving to Champaign, IL in 2013

The team at Bloomington Gold has announced that beginning in 2013 the annual Bloomington Gold Corvette show will be held in Champaign, Illinois on the campus of the University of Illinois. The new location is about 50 miles southeast of where the show was first born back in 1973.

According to show CEO David Burroughs “…input from Corvette owning customers wanted more opportunity for socializing and driving events as part of the entire Corvette show experience. It needed to become more dynamic.” The 2012 event will be the final show at the Pheasant Run Resort in St. Charles just west of Chicago. It has been held there since 2002. Prior to that the show has been held in Bloomington (for 2 different periods) and in Springfield, Illinois.

Burroughs went on to say “Our customers own Corvettes because they are fun to drive. So, we needed a venue that not only served our exhibitors and customers who buy/sell and certify Corvettes, but also a venue that makes it easy and fun to navigate to/from and around the community before, during, and after the show. Therefore, we needed a small town atmosphere with big town hotels, great facilities, and quick escape routes to miles of country roads. Champaign, IL has the smaller town atmosphere and the University of Illinois Assembly Hall grounds have everything else.”

The 2013 event will begin Thursday, June 27th, 2013 with the Cubic Knowledge seminars. The show itself will take place on Friday and Saturday the 28th and 29th. The new SURVIVOR® all-make car show will wrap the weekend on Sunday, June 30th, 2013.

A quick spin through any of the Corvette discussion boards demonstrates the attendees’ desire for more driving-type events. Other high-end Corvette events like Corvettes at Carlisle already offer autocrossing and burnout contests. Checkout the new show flyer and you can see they’re looking at adding drag racing and autocrossing to the weekend agenda if there’s enough demand. We’re pretty sure they’ll get it.

Take a look at the event map and you can see that there’s going to be plenty of room to spread out.

At first thought, we were a little disappointed at this move. The grounds at Pheasant Run are a phenomenal location for a car show. You just can’t beat thousands of Corvettes spread throughout a finely manicured golf course. With that said, we do agree that more driving events were definitely needed at Bloomington. As nice as it is to look at cars sitting still, it’s even better to watch and listen to them doing what they were built for – driving. We do also miss the impromptu evening parking lot gatherings as well as just cruising around town with other Corvette owners. In addition, the new locale should breathe some fresh life into marquee events like the GoldTour. We’re glad that Bloomington Gold has once again listened to their patrons and continues to evolve their product based on feedback and demand.

Check out the full press release.


Source:
Bloomington Gold

Related:
Bloomington Gold 2011: The Rest of the Story
Mecum’s Bloomington Gold Auction Rakes in $5.8 million in Corvette Sales
Bloomington Gold Officially Inducts 2011 Great Hall Honorees

 



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