It's a damned good model car show that's very popular! If you live anywhere near it, you should try to attend. The MAMAS club is a very active model car club, I know most all of the fine folks who run it. They get a ton of people at each one of their meetings. Again, if you're local, you should join in the fun.
An NNL is a model show that's intended more as a show vs. an old-style contest. Started because people were a bit weary of big contests and wanted a fun way to get modelers together to show off their models and swap ideas w/o all the drama and competitiveness that surrounded most model contests-it seemed that the only way people got together as modelers was at contests. The old-style national contests back in the 60's and into the early 70's, which were sponsored by some big-name magazines and national car shows-had fierce competition; many of the builders had an attitude of arrogant competitiveness where they wouldn't tell anyone what they did or how they did it-it was a secret that only they knew. The downfall of the hobby in the late 70's was more from a lack of sponsorship of these big shows which pretty much vanished overnight, and the lack of interesting subject matter to build models of-the 70's were an awful time to be a car enthusiast, and it's a given that you're a car enthusiast when you build models of them.
Historically, NNL's began in the late 70's when a group of contest-weary builders met for fun in someone's garage (in Ohio) to talk about and show off their model cars. These particular guys were called out (in a good-natured way) in an editorial in one of the model car magazines by the organizer of one of a new contest that emerged from the ashes of the old-style contests (the GSL-the best model car contest there is today, and has been for many years), who was disappointed by the absence of some of the country's "national luminaries who will remain nameless" who didn't attend his new contest in Salt Lake City. So these guys (who simply wanted a fun get-together instead of a big contest) started calling themselves "Nameless National Luminaries" (poking fun at the guy who helped them come up with the name-and he's still taking good-natured ribbing about nearly everything to this day) when they first met as a group in their friend's garage, and used that term for their first official "unofficial not-a-contest" show when it moved from the garage to a hotel in Maumee (Toledo), Ohio. NNL became the acronym for this group, and the rest is history. Other clubs now put on similar shows (with the blessing of the original guys who started theirs), they have gotten more popular than traditional contests-the awards that are given are chosen by the participants in mostly people's choice fashion. Now there are NNL's scattered all over the country-and most of them are great shows. The oldest is the NNL in Toledo, the biggest is the NNL East in New Jersey. The most fun is the ACME NNL in Atlanta in November
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05-03-2005, 11:14 AM
