Vrrrooom, Vrrrooom! Annual Car Show Returns to East Aurora

Main Street in East Aurora, New York, soon will look like the toy-cars aisle in Vidler’s 5&10, except on a grander scale.  

From noon to 5 p.m. on Sunday, August 27, the Toy Town Car Show 2023 will line downtown East Aurora with the real thing: an array of still-operable antique and vintage cars and modified trucks, many of them sporting shiny, two-tone paint jobs and all of them as colorful as candy.

A vestige of the now-defunct East Aurora Toy Town Museum’s annual Toy Fest, the car show began in 1986. Though the show ended for a short time when the toy museum closed, in 2009, East Aurora Moose Lodge 370 brought it back in 2011, donating all proceeds to local Boys and Girls clubs.  

Since 2022, American Legion Post 362 has run the car show, which last year featured 450 vehicles.

Stretching between Olean and Maple roads, the Toy Town Car Show annually lines both sides of East Aurora’s Main Street with vintage and modified cars and trucks, their hoods and doors propped open for inspection. More than 50 awards will be handed out in nine classes:

• Antiques 1900-1949
• 1950s
• 1960s
• 1970s
• 1980s-1990s
• 2000 and newer
• Trucks
• Custom/modified
• Special-interest

The car show is good for people-watching, too; hundreds of car enthusiasts join the vehicles’ proud owners in the human pageant packing the street between the rows of cars. And it’s all for a good cause; proceeds from the show, whose proud sponsors include Vidler’s, help fund scholarships for local high school students.

Pre-registration costs $15 per vehicle and can be done by completing this online form and mailing it to American Legion Post 362, P.O. Box 122, in East Aurora. The first 300 vehicles pre-registered receive dashboard plaques.  

Registration the morning of the show costs $20.  

But simply milling about Main Street, appreciating all the cars and trucks? That costs nothing–unless you’re inspired to go shopping for a cool, vintage vehicle of your own.  

In that case, we here at Vidler’s have some very affordable albeit very small cars that just might interest you...

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