On Labor Day we ran the biggest show yet on Car Show HQ: 407 cars, 3,574 votes, trophies handed out four minutes after voting closed. Then we spent the rest of the week building what that day taught us. Everything below is live for every organizer today, at no charge.
The first batch, the one built during show week itself, has its own post: card payments at the gate, a crew QR for volunteers, tablets that set themselves up, the change log. This is everything since.
Show day
Staff can type an entry straight in
A driver at the table with no phone and no patience? Staff add the registrant themselves from the registrants page, car number and all. Paper check in the mail? Same button.
Live arrivals, in place
New registrations pop onto the registrants page as they happen, and tapping one jumps to that row, so the person writing windshield cards is never hunting. On a busy morning the list is long, so it now pages, the day-of toolbar fits on one row of a tablet, and every table scrolls sideways with a bar you can see.
Print one card
Reprint a single windshield card for the entrant who lost theirs, without printing the whole show again. Cards also come in 5 by 7 and letter sizes, portrait or landscape, with sponsor logos in tiers and the club’s logo as the header.
Votes save as you go
On the ballot, every pick saves itself the moment it is made, and the page says so. A spectator who wanders off mid-ballot to look at one more engine bay has lost nothing.
The show runs its own clock
Set the times once and the show moves itself: registration closes when you said it would, voting opens at the voting time and closes at its end time, with the countdown on the public page the whole way. Nobody has to remember to press anything at two in the afternoon.
Voting you can trust
Keep voting on the grounds, your way
Voting on Car Show HQ has always been on site, by QR code and car number, and the location check is how a show decides how firmly to hold that line. It is now one choice with three answers.
- Off. Anyone with the link can vote. Good for private club votes.
- Ask for location, the default. Voters are asked once, with a plain note explaining why and a promise that the position is checked and thrown away. A phone far from the venue is refused; one that cannot answer is let through and counted as unverified on your dashboard.
- Require location. A phone must be on site or it is turned away, and any staff member can let a refused voter in by scanning the code on that voter’s screen.
Your results page shows the counts either way. Think of it as a fence that keeps casual outsiders off the ballot, not a wall. The location check doc walks through all three and the staff pass.
One trophy per car, on purpose
Hand-picked awards now join the one-trophy rule, so Best of Show does not also take a class trophy, and the results page shows the receipt when a board shifts because of it. Pick a car for a special award and it leaves the ballot; clear the pick and it comes back.
Rank the Top list by one category
Top 25 by total votes, by Best of Show runners-up, or by one category’s votes alone. The results page says which.
Trophy pickup on the awards script
The MC’s script gets a switch per winner: collected or not. A winner who left early is one glance away from the table instead of a mystery at teardown.
Two settings for the edge cases
Cars that never checked in stay on the ballot by default; turn that off and a no-show drops out of the standings. And new shows let a voter change a vote after casting it, with the owner’s name shown on the “Car #42” confirmation so a mistyped number is obvious. Both are settings if your show wants otherwise.
A big screen that raises money
The TV leaderboard’s corner code can be the voting code, the donation code, or both, taking turns every fifteen seconds.
Money
Spectators can give
Every show can turn on a public donate page with its own QR code and a “support the show” line on the ballot. You write the message at the top; the money goes straight to the club’s own account, like every other dollar on the platform. Details in spectator donations.
PayPal joins Square and Stripe
Connect a PayPal business account in a guided flow and take entry fees through it. Three processors, one setup page, and the club is always the merchant. Square still connects in two clicks, and Stripe still works with keys and plain instructions. Details in payments and payouts.
Free entries for groups
A discount code that covers the whole fee is a free entry on every route in, online or at the kiosk, with no payment step to confuse anyone. Cap the code’s uses and you have a group registration.
Sign in with Apple, or PayPal
Beside Google and Microsoft. One less password, either way.
Your show’s website
Write your own pages
Every show on Car Show HQ gets a free website on its own address. Now it is a real website: about the club, rules, directions, the history of the show. Organizers write their own pages in the editor, and published ones appear in the site’s own menu. This is the feature we get asked for most, and it is on the free tier like everything else. See your own pages.
A media library
Every picture the club uploads lives in one place, and every picture field in Manage, from the club logo to a sponsor’s, offers “choose from library” next to upload. No more digging through last year’s email for the logo.
Photo galleries for past shows
An archived show keeps a gallery on its permanent page, next to its winners.
Registration closed, said nicely
When entries close, the page says so in your own words and counts down to show day, instead of a dead form.
Custom domains, done right
White-label shows connect their own domain through a guided flow that checks each step, and the certificate takes care of itself once the domain points at us.
Running the club
A setup wizard after you create a show
Six questions, sensible defaults, and the show is ready to publish. Settings themselves are regrouped into a calm sidebar, and search finds every single setting by its plain-English name, so “where is the thing that changes the voting time” is a typed word, not a hunt.
Email your entrants from your club’s name
Blasts go out as “Your Club via Car Show HQ”, replies come back to you, every message carries a one-click unsubscribe, and the footer says what the person registered and when, so it reads like mail they expect. Imported rosters count.
Sponsorship questions go to the right person
Visitor messages from the public contact page land in an inbox with a reply box, and sponsorship inquiries can route to a sponsorship chair’s own address instead of the club’s general one.
Wipe a dry run
Test your show with fake votes or registrations, then clear them from a Destructive actions page that asks you to type the show’s name first.
Bring any spreadsheet
The CSV importer matches your sheet’s columns on screen, joins split first and last names, and never guesses.
New organizers start the same day
Sign-up requests are reviewed automatically, and real clubs are approved the same day instead of waiting for a person to get to the queue.
All of it is included
All of it is included, all of it is live now. If your club is still counting paper ballots, claim your address and see what show day feels like with the counting done for you.
