Last call for Cars & Coffee in Plano
Plano show ending after ‘ordinary cars’ crowd out ‘extraordinary’ ones
File Photo
In 2016, Tom Smith of Fired Up Garage in Dallas and the Discovery Channel’s Misfit Garage handed out information at a Cars & Coffee show at Classic BMW in Plano.
In 2016, Tom Smith of Fired Up Garage in Dallas and the Discovery Channel’s Misfit Garage handed out information at a Cars & Coffee show at Classic BMW in Plano.
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Long before sunrise on Saturday mornings, millions of dollars worth of cars line up on the Dallas North Tollway. There are vintage Lamborghinis. Brand new Ferraris. Fully restored ’60s-era Ford Shelby Mustangs. A $2.8 million Bugatti Chiron.
They idle, in the dark, waiting to park at Classic BMW in Plano. By 7 a.m., the lot is full, and Cars & Coffee kicks into high gear.
“The idea was to create a great place, an open environment,” says Eric Maas, owner of Classic BMW. Families would come, pushing kids in strollers, and teenagers would talk shop with gear heads who had worked on a single car for decades. “We had amphibious cars. We had vintage, ancient cars. We had barn finds. We had race cars. We had tanks. Anything that could be motorized and run down the road, we had here,” Maas says.
But after thousands of car enthusiasts have attended this monthly event since it launched in May 2009, Cars & Coffee will hit the brakes at Classic BMW after what will be its last event this Saturday. The “little car show” that started with 226 vehides has grown to as many as 1,000.
Cars & Coffee is too big, Maas says. And too complicated.
“It’s an enormous amount of work,” Maas says of the free event. It has raised about $120,000, according to the website, for a rotating group of charities. His employees move 400 to 600 BMWs out of the lot on Thursdays and Fridays to make room for an unknown number of cars that show up the next day. The dealership hires extra security to keep watch of the throngs of people geeking out over North Texas’ most interesting cars, many of which are irreplaceable.
Over the years, though, Maas says Cars & Coffee began to attract vehicles he says were not “show cars.”
“These really ordinary cars have come in and pushed the extraordinary cars out,” he says.
“It’s hard, but you kind of have to pick and choose. Most of what comes in — and is expensive — is worthy. Sometimes really inexpensive stuff is even more worthy.
“We were putting on an average show, and it really needed to be excellent,” he says. “It was just time.”
A community was born
Cars & Coffee in Plano was launched, at first, as a marketing tactic. The BMW dealership had moved from Richardson to Plano, and Maas wanted car enthusiasts to know where to find the new showroom.
But Cars & Coffee was never about selling BMWs, Maas says, and the show attracted cars of all makes and models. “It became a place to show your car, meet like minded people in the car community, and provide a unique opportunity for people to see cars they may not see that frequently,” says Chris Casten, a car enthusiast who moved from Orange County, Calif., to Plano 10 years ago.
He lined up at 5 a.m. on Saturdays to show off his 1968 Ford Mustang, a vintage car he paid $6,000 for in 2006. “All in, it’s probably worth $20,000,” he says. “But it’s more fun than the value of it. It’s more about working on it and tinkering on it.”
Drivers and car enthusiasts come from all over North Texas for Cars & Coffee. John Taylor, a Highland Village resident, attended the very first Cars & Coffee with one of his luxury cars. That day, he drove his Alpha Romeo 8C, a rare vehicle worth about $275,000 back in 2009.
It was thrilling to see this car community created almost overnight, Taylor says. “Most car owners enjoy sharing their cars with other people. I particularly love sharing them with young boys and girls who have an interest in it,” he says, noting that some of them have lots of car knowledge from playing a motorsport video game called Forza. “Occasionally, I learn something from them.”
He complimented Cars & Coffee, calling it “unusual” because of the high caliber of cars on the lot. “There’s something here for everyone,” he says.
A ‘slap in the face’
That’s part of the problem at Cars & Coffee: Nobody, including the organizers of the event, want to define an "extraordinary” car.
Any car enthusiast who has put money and time into a car likely thinks it’s special.
Maas understands, calling it the "last thing I wanted to talk about” — telling car people their cars weren’t high enough quality.
Arlington resident Taylor Brown won’t be returning to this Saturday’s event after his 2003 Ford Mustang Cobra was turned away in November. He woke up at 4:30 a.m. in Arlington and had finally made it to the front of the line in Plano at 7:05, where he says he was told “they had hit their limit on Cobras."
He believes his car is extraordinary. “Every time people see a ‘Terminator,’ they always go crazy over it,” he says of the nickname Cobras got in 2003 and 2004 because they ‘terminated' their competitors, the Firebird and the Camaro.
For Brown and other car enthusiasts who complained on social media, Cars & Coffee inadvertently dissed the work they'd done to make their cars unique.
“This is my trophy," Brown says. “I wanted this car since I was 17 years old.”
It felt like a “slap in the face” when McKinney resident Addison Duhon wasn’t allowed in with his 2015 Scion TC. He, too, woke up at 4:30 a.m. and arrived at 5. He was turned away after that.
Enthusiasts like Drew Cox, who drives a 2017 Hyundai Veloster Turbo that he built, says he’d rather find smaller groups of like-minded car enthusiasts. He helps operate a group called DFW Velosters and is a regular at Cars & Cantina, which takes place at 10 a.m. on the first Saturday of the month at Lava Cantina in The Colony.
He says he enjoys meeting other people who put “time and effort into making their car their own” — regardless of how expensive it might’ve been.
“I don't think refusing people is the best message to send," he says of Cars & Coffee in Plano. “We're all enthusiasts. We all enjoy one thing, and that's cars."
An audience of 32,000
McKinney resident Luke Brooks' way to get into Cars & Coffee was to snap photos of his favorite luxury vehicles on his Canon Rebel T5i camera.
Since 2014, he's been posting his photos to the Instagram account@ cars.and.coffee.dallas, which has grown to more than 32,000 followers. It got so popular, so quickly that the executives at Classic BMW didn’t even know who was running the account. The answer surprised them: It was Brooks, who started it when he was 14 years old.
Now 18 years old, the Prosper High School graduate is still posting to his avid fanbase with this mantra: “post good-quality photos, and post often.” He runs some of the only Cars & Coffee promotional outreach, still as a volunteer.
Over the years, he’s seen the quality in cars diminish. “If you read some of the comments on my Instagram, you can see a lot of complaining of the quality of the cars coming in. And it’s really hard to control them,” he says.
The buzz ends for now
The final Cars & Coffee at Classic BMW starts at 7 a.m. Saturday. Like many of the events over the years, it wall be a fundraiser for Toys for Tots, and attendees are asked to make a cash donation or bring an unwrapped toy.
A few hours before sunrise, fans are expected to stop traffic, like usual, on the Dallas North Tollway as they wait for a coveted spot inside the dealership. Hundreds or more will show up, not to show off their vehicles but to get a glimpse of cars they may never see again, all parked in the same place, for free.
But it is expected to return. Cars & Coffee is now a franchise that has expanded to New Zealand, Bulgaria and Italy. Maas is hopeful that Classic BMW can sell its ownership in Cars & Coffee to someone else in the car community in North Texas.
“We’re hoping to hand this off'” says John Kobell, general manager at Classic BMW in Plano. He says they’re in discussions now with someone they say is “very capable" and claims the new location of the event will be "a definite fit." But he won’t say who, or where, just yet.
The focus, for now, is on Saturday.
“This show did more than Eric and I had ever imagined," Kobell says. “We’ve watched a father teach his son how to look at a car. When we see that, we’ve said, ‘This is a total success.'"
Twitter: @sblaskovich
Long before sunrise on Saturday mornings, millions of dollars worth of cars line up on the Dallas North Tollway. There are vintage Lamborghinis. Brand new Ferraris. Fully restored ’60s-era Ford Shelby Mustangs. A $2.8 million Bugatti Chiron.
They idle, in the dark, waiting to park at Classic BMW in Plano. By 7 a.m., the lot is full, and Cars & Coffee kicks into high gear.
“The idea was to create a great place, an open environment,” says Eric Maas, owner of Classic BMW. Families would come, pushing kids in strollers, and teenagers would talk shop with gear heads who had worked on a single car for decades. “We had amphibious cars. We had vintage, ancient cars. We had barn finds. We had race cars. We had tanks. Anything that could be motorized and run down the road, we had here,” Maas says.
But after thousands of car enthusiasts have attended this monthly event since it launched in May 2009, Cars & Coffee will hit the brakes at Classic BMW after what will be its last event this Saturday. The “little car show” that started with 226 vehides has grown to as many as 1,000.
Cars & Coffee is too big, Maas says. And too complicated.
“It’s an enormous amount of work,” Maas says of the free event. It has raised about $120,000, according to the website, for a rotating group of charities. His employees move 400 to 600 BMWs out of the lot on Thursdays and Fridays to make room for an unknown number of cars that show up the next day. The dealership hires extra security to keep watch of the throngs of people geeking out over North Texas’ most interesting cars, many of which are irreplaceable.
Over the years, though, Maas says Cars & Coffee began to attract vehicles he says were not “show cars.”
“These really ordinary cars have come in and pushed the extraordinary cars out,” he says.
“It’s hard, but you kind of have to pick and choose. Most of what comes in — and is expensive — is worthy. Sometimes really inexpensive stuff is even more worthy.
“We were putting on an average show, and it really needed to be excellent,” he says. “It was just time.”
A community was born
Cars & Coffee in Plano was launched, at first, as a marketing tactic. The BMW dealership had moved from Richardson to Plano, and Maas wanted car enthusiasts to know where to find the new showroom.
But Cars & Coffee was never about selling BMWs, Maas says, and the show attracted cars of all makes and models. “It became a place to show your car, meet like minded people in the car community, and provide a unique opportunity for people to see cars they may not see that frequently,” says Chris Casten, a car enthusiast who moved from Orange County, Calif., to Plano 10 years ago.
He lined up at 5 a.m. on Saturdays to show off his 1968 Ford Mustang, a vintage car he paid $6,000 for in 2006. “All in, it’s probably worth $20,000,” he says. “But it’s more fun than the value of it. It’s more about working on it and tinkering on it.”
Drivers and car enthusiasts come from all over North Texas for Cars & Coffee. John Taylor, a Highland Village resident, attended the very first Cars & Coffee with one of his luxury cars. That day, he drove his Alpha Romeo 8C, a rare vehicle worth about $275,000 back in 2009.
It was thrilling to see this car community created almost overnight, Taylor says. “Most car owners enjoy sharing their cars with other people. I particularly love sharing them with young boys and girls who have an interest in it,” he says, noting that some of them have lots of car knowledge from playing a motorsport video game called Forza. “Occasionally, I learn something from them.”
He complimented Cars & Coffee, calling it “unusual” because of the high caliber of cars on the lot. “There’s something here for everyone,” he says.
A ‘slap in the face’
That’s part of the problem at Cars & Coffee: Nobody, including the organizers of the event, want to define an "extraordinary” car.
Any car enthusiast who has put money and time into a car likely thinks it’s special.
Maas understands, calling it the "last thing I wanted to talk about” — telling car people their cars weren’t high enough quality.
Arlington resident Taylor Brown won’t be returning to this Saturday’s event after his 2003 Ford Mustang Cobra was turned away in November. He woke up at 4:30 a.m. in Arlington and had finally made it to the front of the line in Plano at 7:05, where he says he was told “they had hit their limit on Cobras."
He believes his car is extraordinary. “Every time people see a ‘Terminator,’ they always go crazy over it,” he says of the nickname Cobras got in 2003 and 2004 because they ‘terminated' their competitors, the Firebird and the Camaro.
For Brown and other car enthusiasts who complained on social media, Cars & Coffee inadvertently dissed the work they'd done to make their cars unique.
“This is my trophy," Brown says. “I wanted this car since I was 17 years old.”
It felt like a “slap in the face” when McKinney resident Addison Duhon wasn’t allowed in with his 2015 Scion TC. He, too, woke up at 4:30 a.m. and arrived at 5. He was turned away after that.
Enthusiasts like Drew Cox, who drives a 2017 Hyundai Veloster Turbo that he built, says he’d rather find smaller groups of like-minded car enthusiasts. He helps operate a group called DFW Velosters and is a regular at Cars & Cantina, which takes place at 10 a.m. on the first Saturday of the month at Lava Cantina in The Colony.
He says he enjoys meeting other people who put “time and effort into making their car their own” — regardless of how expensive it might’ve been.
“I don't think refusing people is the best message to send," he says of Cars & Coffee in Plano. “We're all enthusiasts. We all enjoy one thing, and that's cars."
An audience of 32,000
McKinney resident Luke Brooks' way to get into Cars & Coffee was to snap photos of his favorite luxury vehicles on his Canon Rebel T5i camera.
Since 2014, he's been posting his photos to the Instagram account@ cars.and.coffee.dallas, which has grown to more than 32,000 followers. It got so popular, so quickly that the executives at Classic BMW didn’t even know who was running the account. The answer surprised them: It was Brooks, who started it when he was 14 years old.
Now 18 years old, the Prosper High School graduate is still posting to his avid fanbase with this mantra: “post good-quality photos, and post often.” He runs some of the only Cars & Coffee promotional outreach, still as a volunteer.
Over the years, he’s seen the quality in cars diminish. “If you read some of the comments on my Instagram, you can see a lot of complaining of the quality of the cars coming in. And it’s really hard to control them,” he says.
The buzz ends for now
The final Cars & Coffee at Classic BMW starts at 7 a.m. Saturday. Like many of the events over the years, it wall be a fundraiser for Toys for Tots, and attendees are asked to make a cash donation or bring an unwrapped toy.
A few hours before sunrise, fans are expected to stop traffic, like usual, on the Dallas North Tollway as they wait for a coveted spot inside the dealership. Hundreds or more will show up, not to show off their vehicles but to get a glimpse of cars they may never see again, all parked in the same place, for free.
But it is expected to return. Cars & Coffee is now a franchise that has expanded to New Zealand, Bulgaria and Italy. Maas is hopeful that Classic BMW can sell its ownership in Cars & Coffee to someone else in the car community in North Texas.
“We’re hoping to hand this off'” says John Kobell, general manager at Classic BMW in Plano. He says they’re in discussions now with someone they say is “very capable" and claims the new location of the event will be "a definite fit." But he won’t say who, or where, just yet.
The focus, for now, is on Saturday.
“This show did more than Eric and I had ever imagined," Kobell says. “We’ve watched a father teach his son how to look at a car. When we see that, we’ve said, ‘This is a total success.'"
Twitter: @sblaskovich