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Motor Heads
Canton Cars & Coffee kicks shows into gear.
Miatas, Mustangs, and Volkswagen GTIs fill an asphalt parking lot where car enthusiasts come together to show off their rides and talk cars for the first 2023 Canton Cars & Coffee show in April. Seventy-four-year-old Canton resident Roger Mauter proudly chats about his discontinued British roadster — a stunningly preserved two-door burgundy 1974 Triumph TR6.
“I’ve always been a sports car guy,” he says.
A light rain steadily beads on about 120 waxed, shined and polished cars for the show in the parking lot of Royal Docks Brewing Co.’s Brewhouse & Cannery, where attendees duck inside for a cup of MMC Coffee Co.’s custom 710 blend. An imported right-handed drive MR2 garners a crowd for a moment — then an impressive pearl white second-generation Pontiac Firebird, then a classic first-gen Volkswagen Rabbit — the forefather of all the generations of GTIs in the lot.
For Mauter, this is what it’s all about — a way to share enthusiasm for car culture, a passing of passion across generations of an American pastime. His friend, 65-year-old Uniontown resident Eric Langreder, drove his white “hot hatch” Volkswagen GTI to the show and also has a Triumph TR6. The two met through the North Coast Triumph Association and do shows from Wisconsin to New Jersey and have been going to Canton Cars & Coffee for the last three years. The group that started about 10 years ago with 10 to 15 people in a parking lot has grown into shows with 300 cars on average. From April to December, Canton Cars & Coffee meets monthly at Royal Docks and does a second show most months that can be off-site. Upcoming dates include June 3 and 17, July 1 and 29, and Aug. 12 and 26.
With a piping hot dark roast in hand and giddy enthusiasm, Mauter and Langreder talk cars.
What do you think of car culture now in the United States?
Roger Mauter: In our club, most of the members are 50-plus-years-old, some 60. … Now [Eric’s] son is in on it, so he has a Triumph too.
Eric Langreder: It’s going to evolve. I don’t think it’s ever going to go away. But it’s definitely changing. Most guys like us, we got the cars that we liked when we were younger, that we wanted to have and maybe couldn’t afford. But now it’s different. I think clubs in general are kind of fading for most people — it’s all online stuff. There aren’t a lot of in-person clubs.
What brings you guys out to shows?
RM: The camaraderie, talking cars with other people. Unless we get together … I don’t really have any people to talk cars.
EL: People’s eyes tend to glaze over at Christmas dinner when you talk about stick shifts and horsepower, so you got to do this to have that release.
How is the reception to the Triumphs?
RM: If you’re a car guy before anything else, you got the common ground to talk. … Everybody has a story. Every car has a story.
EL: There’s a connection between the generations. … Maize Valley Winery, they do a cruise-in on Thursday nights. I invite kids with their parents. You open the door and let them sit behind the wheel. You see the look on their faces — they can’t believe it. They’ll look to their dad and say, Can I really do this? Then the dad goes, Yeah, get in the car. It’s important because that’s the next generation. If they don’t have that interest — who’s going to take my car when I’m gone?
Visit cantoncarsandcoffee.com, or for more information on other local car shows, visit minervamotorclub.com.
