Celebration of the Motorcar - Cocktails, Canapes and Campbell

Celebration of the Motorcar is an event bringing together many classic cars with the aim of helping to fund raise for particular charities. In 2013 the charity beneficiary is Bridging Communities ( www.bridgingcommunities.com.au ). The 2013 Celebration of the Motorcar was used to raise funds for weighted blankets which would be provided to children in need who require these for better sleep patterns. The example given was for the autistic children who need the comfort of the weight, but not the extra heat you usually get from having a heavy blanket. So these ones have small stainless steel or plastic beads sewn into them to give the weight.

The Saturday evening prior to the car show itself, a cocktail event was held to help raise extra funds for Bridging Communities. This meant that 30 of the 130 cars would be on display, drinks would be served, and Campbell Bolwell would be in attendance as the special guest of honour. This was due to this years event not only having feature displays for 100 years of Aston Martin and 50 years of the Porsche 911, but also 50 years of Bolwell, to which Campbell was the founder.

Campbell flew across from Melbourne for the event and spoke about the creation of the company, how it's grown and a little on where Bolwell Corporation is heading. Now Bolwell are a composite manufacturing business, but continue to be innovators in their fields, and there are certainly many fields. One of the business arms produces caravans, and the new Nagari is due to Campbells love for motorcars. Which is why he got started with tinkering with cars back before he was 15, managed to turn it into a business at 16 by producing fibreglass car bodies for people to build into their own kit car, and why 7 production models later he's still enthused about cars and spending time with those who also enjoy tinkering with the products. I'm not sure the latest Nagari needs much tinkering, but all earlier models were pretty much built with that in mind as they were mostly kit cars.

After a talk about Celebration of the Motorcar, Bridging Communities and Bolwell, it was time for a short and sweet auction to raise a little more money for the blankets. There was some quality champagne, a night in the presidential suite at the Hyatt, and half an hour in the passenger seat of a Ferrari F40. These items raised over $3500 between them.

Once the official run of formalities was complete, it was back to mingling, be it with other people, the cars, or the bar. It made for a fun combination no matter how they were mixed.

The range of cars covered early classics through to modern supercars, with an interesting mix in between.

Then as the evening drew to a close, the sun dipped behind the Indian Ocean allowing for a great evening at the Cottesloe Civic Centre to come to an end. The up side was that in the morning we would be back for the main day of motorcar celebration.