What started as a way to bring people to downtown Senoia has grown into one of Georgia’s largest classic car shows, the history of the Senoia Car Show.
Twenty-one years ago, the Senoia Car Show was born from a pretty simple idea: give people a reason to come downtown.
Longtime Main Street merchant Gail Downs and fellow merchant Suzanne Helfman were looking for ways to draw people into Senoia and support the businesses growing there. Both women were also instrumental in starting Senoia’s Downtown Development Authority, and somewhere in those efforts, the idea of putting on a car show took shape. It wasn’t a massive event. There weren’t hundreds of vehicles lining the streets or crowds filling downtown. That first show brought fewer than 30 cars.
This year, organizers are preparing for nearly 700.
Now entering its 21st year, the Senoia Car Show has grown into one of the community’s biggest annual draws and one of the largest classic car shows in Georgia. In 2025, 615 vehicles filled downtown, and organizers expect that number to climb even higher this year.
It’s quite a transformation for something that started with a simple goal of bringing a few more people to Main Street.
Today, an event that began with a few dozen cars requires around 150 volunteers to pull off, many of them local residents. A core group of around 10 organizers, including Steve Maloy, works to bring it all together, while volunteers are trained ahead of the event and take on the countless jobs necessary to welcome hundreds of vehicles and the crowds that come to see them.
And the cars themselves have to earn their place.
To register, a vehicle must be at least 25 years old, turning downtown Senoia into a rolling timeline of automotive history for a day. Participants come from throughout the area and from as far away as North Carolina, bringing everything from carefully restored classics to trucks and cars that carry stories of their own.
Over the years, the show has attracted some familiar faces from the automotive world as well. Rutledge Wood, known for his work in automotive television, has attended as a VIP, while Dennis Gage brought My Classic Car to Senoia to film an episode.
But some of the traditions that mean the most have much deeper roots in the event itself.
The Gail Downs Memorial Award, given for Best Car in Show, is named in memory of Gail Downs, honoring one of the people whose original idea helped put the first cars on Main Street more than two decades ago. Rod Hill, who has been involved with the show since the beginning and remains involved today, is honored through the Rod Hill Award, given for Best Truck in Show.
Those names provide a connection between what visitors see today and the much smaller event that started it all.
More Than One Day As the show has grown, so have the traditions surrounding it.
This year marks the second annual Car Show Poker Run, held the day before the main event. The idea came from a pretty practical observation: after putting all that work into cleaning and preparing the cars for the show, why only enjoy them for one day?
The Poker Run sends participants out to five local landmarks, where they snap a selfie at each stop before gathering at Merimac Lakes. The locations change from year to year, giving participants a different route and a few new places to discover along the way. Crook’s Grocery was among the stops for the inaugural run last year, adding a fitting bit of Senoia history to the first outing.
Proceeds from the Poker Run benefit the Senoia Area Historical Society.
Then, when Saturday arrives, downtown takes on a look that feels almost like a snapshot of classic Americana.
Hundreds of classic cars and trucks line the streets, and above them flies the massive American flag that has become an iconic sight at Senoia events. The flag was first displayed during car show weekend two years ago, creating a patriotic backdrop that seemed right at home above rows of vehicles representing generations of American automotive history. Since then, it has become a familiar and meaningful sight at events around town.
Adding to that classic feel is another longtime staple of the show: The Varsity food truck. Few things pair quite as naturally with a day of classic cars as one of Georgia’s most recognizable names in burgers, hot dogs and roadside tradition.
For a show built around nostalgia, history and the cars people still love decades after they first rolled off the assembly line, it all seems to fit.
The People Behind the Cars Of course, putting nearly 700 vehicles on the streets of downtown Senoia doesn’t happen by itself.
The organizers and approximately 150 volunteers are the people who turn months of planning into one of Senoia’s largest days of the year. From preparing ahead of the event to managing hundreds of arriving vehicles and thousands of visitors, it takes a lot of people willing to give their time to keep a 21-year tradition rolling.
And perhaps that’s where the history of the Senoia Car Show is best measured. Not simply in how many cars show up, but in the fact that something Gail Downs and Suzanne Helfman helped begin more than two decades ago is still filling Main Street today.
The cars have changed. The crowds have certainly gotten bigger.
But 21 years later, they’re still coming downtown.