Looking back
Now looking forward to it's 12th year, the show started life as "VWs@Stansted" in 2006, initially the idea of one of the teachers at the school where the show is held as a fundraising event for the school.
2006 The first year was a resounding success and attracted over 300 VWs and a strong and enthusiastic owners-club representation.
2007 saw the show grow in size to around 400 cars with more trade stalls and more activities throughout the day. Support grew for the show and many of the day visitors write high praise of the day on club and national VW forums.
2008 Spurred on by this support the show further improved in 2008 with good support from many show-goers who now count Elemental VW as one of the must-go shows of the year and again voiced their praises on internet forums and in magazines.
2009 was a coming of age for Elemental VW Show, with new blood and fresh ideas the show expanded further combining music, entertainment and all the standard features of a VW with a relaxed and informal atmosphere creating a unique 'festival feel' for a show of its size.
2010 was the best Elemental to date, Hawkwind's Nik Turner headlined a host of great entertainment on one of the best days of spring to a near capacity VW show that raised over £2,500 for Essex Air Ambulance
2011 was a scorcher of a show - sunshine and heat and Hobo Jones & the Junkyard Dogs back after their storming show closing performance of 2009 gave us a capacity VW show that raised over £5,000 for Essex Air Ambulance
2012 the show was blessed with one of the very few dry weekends of the spring or indeed summer and was well supported to capacity once again.
2013 was a strange combination of weather this year. Snow two days before the show.melted all at once and turned one part of the new venue into a bog while in contrast show day itself was the first really nice sunny day we'd had at a show for seemingly nearly a year. The combination of both reduced field size due to mud and increased entry numbers due to the weather meant that sadly by 10:30am on show day we had to start turning people away. From an organiser's point of view too many people is a nice problem to have but from a visitor's perspective I appreciate there were some disappointed folks on the day. My advice for next time is to prebook.
2014 was a perfect show for us, the weather was just right, the crowd were wonderful and reached capacity even though our show clashed dates with the much larger Big Bang show and (dare we say it) everything went to plan with our biggest amount raised for Essex Air Ambulance to date £6090.22!
2015 went like clockwork and didn't clash with anyone and we introduced the VW scene to audience participation music with the legendary Jesus Hooligan drumming extravaganza.
2016 we took a year off and ruined everyone's April! Sorry about that but after ten years you need a break but we came back as we promised we would.
2017 was the year we became the world's first fully solar powered VW event and to celebrate the sun shone for us like it knew.
2018 Hawaiian Party.... in April... who knows...?
