Once a year in the small city of Pottstown, Pennsylvania, the largest gathering of Volkswagen AG–branded vehicles in North America rolls in for a multi-day event called L’oe Show. Through what is surely months of preparation, and confirmed sleepless nights during the event itself, Jamie Orr and crew go all in to create the best possible experience for attendees. For 2025, they absolutely delivered. Between the pre-meets, the Saturday mash-up with Hot Rods, and Sunday’s main event, Loe’ Show has become a must-attend weekend packed with people to meet, cars to drool over, and pop-up events everywhere.
Even better, Pottstown itself WANTS us there, and every local we have run into over the years has been super friendly and excited for us to be there. Founded in 1752 by John Potts (originally Pottsgrove) as an iron and steel town, Pottstown has faced the same economic struggles as other U.S. boom towns since the 1970s. There has been a big push to revitalise the area through tourism and events like L’oe, and it’s been incredible to see local businesses thrive and new ones open where buildings once sat empty. If you have attended since the first Loe’ Show five years ago, you would have witnessed the transformation firsthand.
We usually try to make the early bird meet at Sly Fox Brewery on Thursday night. It is a perfect spot for catching up with friends over pints and pizza. Sausage and Peppers is my favourite if you need a recommendation.
Friday kicked off at 7:30 a.m. with a two hour Le Bicycle Ride led by Jamie himself, which I unfortunately missed thanks to the night before. Luckily, Coventry Parlor’s brunch meet is the perfect Friday morning warm-up for those arriving early. It is still small compared to Saturday and Sunday due to people’s schedules and their inability to arrive in town before Friday night, but a great place to start the weekend with quality builds and good food.
The rest of Friday was spent cleaning cars, grabbing bites to eat with friends, and heading to the Rotiform x Milltek x L’oe Show store. This year their store(s) were located in an abandoned motorcycle dealership where Kiss Cycles of Pottstown had once resided for a portion of its 103 year run before sadly closing its doors in 2016. It also happened to include a vehicle elevator and a 2nd story showroom ‘Museum’ that Jamie had curated, basically a collection of unique VW vehicles, including the PVW competition winning cars. These three cars had been selected from a huge amount of entires that had been submitted by readers of the magazine who entered to have their cars shipped over to the show from Europe. The PVW and L’oe Show team chose these cars for various reasons. In first place was Claire Schönborn’s Berg Cup winning Mk1 Golf for obvious reason, really. If you’re into old-skool motorsport cars, then this is the type of car we all aspire to own or build. First runner up was Dave Custance and his gold VW Derby, which runs a Ducati Multistrada V4 bike engine and a rear-wheel-drive set up. Full feature on both these cars, soon. And finally, in third place, was Adam Gough’s bright orange Euro-look Mk2 G60 from the cover of PVW 4/22. Both the car and Adam represent everything that PVW stands for.
The setup was absolutely killer. Rotiform turned the lower space into a full “RimBoys” experience with exclusive merch (a play on PepBoys), giant inflatables, and a timed wheel-change contest where the winner scored a free set of wheels. Out of all the vendor setups I saw all weekend, this was my favourite. Carl, JJ, and the crew nailed it as always. Big props to Milltek, L’oe Shop, and Players too. Having them all under one roof made the flow between the first and second floors perfect and the vibe even better.
Everyone parks as far as the eye can see
Saturday morning started with The Wagoons meet-up, fitting since we were in the MK4 Golf Variant (more on that car in a later issue). Coffee and donuts on a brisk morning at 8 a.m. hit the spot before heading to the UroTuning x Integrated Engineering Cars and Coffee at 10 a.m. This meet was massive and easily the biggest VW meet I have ever attended. Cars poured in nonstop. A highlight for me was Nick Berry’s VR5-swapped Lupo GTI, built with help from The Humble Mechanic, H&R, Altermann, and Milltek. It was an incredibly rare swap in an already rare car to see in the U.S.
After this, it’s time to secure a spot on High Street for the afternoon, catch some much needed rest, and prep for the Pottstown Nights Car Show hosted by Red Horse Motoring Club from 3pm to 9pm. This is probably one of my favourite parts of every L’oe Show I’ve attended, everyone already in town parks as far as the eye can see up and down High Street and are mixed in with trucks, hot rods, and other domestics for Saturday’s show. Its wild to experience for the first time, but its really neat to see a 68 C-10 and a MK3 Jetta parked next to each other, especially when 70% of the cars you see are well sorted show quality builds from all corners of car culture.
Around the time of day you’d imagine is perfect to twist off like a cheap bolt H&R, Fifteen52, BFI, and Integrated Engineering hosted pop-up meets in various locations down High Street. If you ever get the chance to attend one of these, do it. Meeting the people who build the parts we all love and run, outside of their busy booths on show day, is worth it every time.
Sunday had finally come, the moment everyone in town had been waiting for!! The entire weekend culminated into this onslaught of “everything all at once, now!” that I have never outside of SEMA and Hong Kong experienced. It might be me and my high anxiety, but the never ending something to see everywhere I look really gets me quite blurry. High Street was littered with VAG cars for miles, with over 1,000 show cars registered, over 60 vendors attending, and spectating was 100% free for those not interested in registering, so you can imagine the insanity that onlookers would see as they try to carefully navigate up and down the street. The day went off without a hitch and everyone seemed to have an incredibly great time.
The magic of L’oe Show is that it draws such a wide range of people and cars that you are guaranteed to see something new, innovative, or out of this world each and every year. That is why it has quickly become the “can’t miss” event of the year in North America, and that is why you should start planning now to attend next years.
– Autrey McVicker (Some people call me the space cowboy, some call me the gangster of mods)