The short version
People’s Choice voting has been part of Car Show HQ from the start: spectators scan the QR code on a windshield card and vote by car number, right there at the show. Judged awards were the other half of the day, and until now that half still ran on paper scoresheets and a calculator in the registration tent. That changes today. Judged scoring is live for every show.
Judges score from the browser on their own phones. No app to download, no account to create. You hand each judge a short code, they enter it, and they see the classes you assigned them with a scoresheet you built.
The scoresheet is yours
We did not ship a fixed 100-point concours sheet and call it a day. You define the criteria, the point range for each one, and whether a class scores by sum or by average. A cars and coffee running a three-line sheet covering paint, stance, and the story behind the car fits, and so does a club show running a detailed long-form sheet, because the sheet is whatever your club already argues about in the parking lot.
For a first-year club show, a sheet like this covers the ground without wearing your judges out:
| Criterion | Points |
|---|---|
| Paint and body | 0 to 10 |
| Interior | 0 to 10 |
| Engine bay | 0 to 10 |
| Stance and wheels | 0 to 10 |
| Overall impression | 0 to 5 |
Five lines, forty-five points, and a judge can work a full class before the coffee goes cold. A concours crowd will want three times the detail on the sheet, and that is fine too. Both are the same feature with different sheets, and our judging sheets guide walks through the trade-offs if you are building yours from scratch.
That flexibility has a limit worth naming. Car Show HQ does point judging and digital judging. If your show runs a format that is not points on a sheet, this release is not pretending to cover it.
How a judging round runs
On show morning you assign classes to judges, print the judge sheets if you want a paper backup (plenty of judges like a clipboard in hand, and we get it), and share the code. A judge walks the row, pulls up each car by the number on its windshield card, and works down the sheet. Scores save as they go.
While judging runs, you can see which classes are done and which judge is still out walking the rows. That sounds like a small thing. It is not, because at most judged shows the single slowest step is finding out whether judging is finished, and the person who has to find out is you, on foot, in the sun.
When the last class comes in, the tally is already done.
The edit history
Judges change their minds, and that is fine. A judge can revise a score before you finalize, and every version is kept next to the original. If a result is ever questioned, you can show exactly what was entered, when, and what changed.
We think this is the most important part of the release, more than the phones and more than the automatic math. Most scoring disputes are not really about who won. They are about whether anyone can prove the count was straight, and a tally that carries its own history settles that argument before it starts.
Results stay sealed until you finalize them. Nobody, including the judges, sees standings before you decide the numbers are settled.
Judged awards next to People’s Choice
The two systems run side by side without stepping on each other. Spectators keep scanning and voting by car number, one vote per person per category, on site only. Judges keep scoring their assigned classes. Best of Show, category winners, and People’s Choice all land in the same results view, and awards can start the moment you finalize.
The scores outlive the day
One more thing the paper sheet never did. Once you finalize, the winning car in every judged class goes onto your show’s permanent page: year, make, and model, the owner’s name, and the points behind the win, drawn from the same immutable scorecard records the live tally used. Your show’s address stays up after the show ends, so the class win a member earned in July is still there, citable and public, when they are talking the car up at a winter swap meet.
Turning it on
Judged scoring is included in every show, free ones too, with no size cap. Add judged awards to your show, build the sheet, assign judges, share the code. If you want to see the flow before your own event, the live demo show has judging seeded, so you can click through a real scoresheet with real scores on it.
