The Swap Meet at the Vintage Festival is one of the largest in the country and between the swap meet and cool vintage racing; this event brings people in from all around the world. It's fascinating to walk around the pit area and check out all the tags and talk to all the different people with their stories to tell, and there is no shortage of characters to see that's for sure!

  The camping area was filled, people were SO ready for this outdoor Festival, but they were also coming to participate in some really awesome, Off Road Trials & Cross Country Racing, Cross Country Vintage/Novice/Women's Races, Road Racing, and our all time favorites, The Century Parade & the Side Car Racing; talk about something really cool to watch, so was the LeMans style racing where the riders started across the track and had human kickstands holding their bikes, then ran and jumped on them and took off, too funny! And then there were the concerts by: Tim Dugger & John Elefante of Kansas Featuring Six Wire.

  Inside the Barber Vintage Motorsports Museum, there were Seminar's hosted by Kennie Buchanan, Evan Wilcox & Gary Braun, Guy Reynolds, and "Old School Pinstriping" with one of the best artists around, Michael Swann and thankfully he's right in our backyard. He also does canvas work and airbrushing along with his freehand and has been known to apply some of his artistic abilities to some of the priceless eye candy there at the Museum, so you know he has to be pretty good to be entrusted with that task.

  The Fan Zone was a buzz with activities and FOLKS. There were food trucks merchandise trucks, Alabama Law Tiger’s, stuff for the kiddos, "The Wall of Death" and the crazy people riding inside the wire ball....these guys are nuts! But I love it!

  Mary McGee was this year's Grand Marshall. She was on hand for autographs and to do parade laps, the public got to do some parade laps as well; everybody loves riding this world famous track, even the Jefferson County Sheriffs escorts get a big kick out of leading laps out there.

Mary McGee even met one of the Barber Motorsports Park’s more famous, lovable and furry residents, “Lucky", the Golden that adopted the park, everyone loves him & the park, even the deer drop in for a visit from time to time.

  I think it was a pretty successful and fun weekend for everyone involved, and you couldn't have asked for more beautiful weekend weather wise. The winners of the weekend passes raffled off at the Zoo Run Safari for Children’s event, Ross & Nikki, enjoyed the weekend as well.

Also new this year:

Birmingham, AL (October 4, 2021) Barber Vintage Motorsports Museum is proud to announce the creation of the Advanced Design Center as part of the stunning Barber Motorsports Park complex in Birmingham, Alabama.

The Barber Advanced Design Center (BADC) was created to inspire new generations of creative thinkers. It will function as a high-tech workspace for Industrial Design exploration that includes a multimedia hub for visiting designers to collaborate with other designers from around the world. 

The BADC consists of 11,000 square feet in a minimalist style driven by concrete and glass and mixed with abstract paintings and contemporary and classic mid-century-modern furniture. It’s located on the top floor of a recent expansion of the Barber Vintage Motorsports Museum.

The Center was designed by Brian Case, Director of the BADC, who was tasked by the museum’s founder George Barber and his executive team to propose ideas for a new educational component at the museum.

“No other design studio in the world has this kind of access to study and be inspired by machines of the past,” enthuses Case, designer of the unprecedented Motus MST V-4 motorcycle. 

The BADC’s first project is a reboot of one of the most revered, exotic and rare sporting motorcycles built in the past half-century, Ducati’s stunning Supermono introduced in 1993. 

The Supermono was an exceptionally light sportbike that could carve racetracks faster than any single-cylinder motorcycle. The engine featured a highly innovative design that employed a “dummy” connecting rod as a weighted rocker to quell the intense vibration emitted from high-revving Singles, allowing higher rpm for increased power. 

The Supermono was also the prettiest sportbike penned by noted designer Pierre Terblanche, who is currently working along with the BADC to create a thoroughly modern version of the iconic machine. It’s a “director’s cut” of the Supermono, 30 years in the making.

“The layout and construction of the bike will be new,” Terblanche explains about the non-running but technologically fully resolved prototype. 

“Advances in systems designed on CAD, the latest CNC machining, and improved Additive Rapid Prototyping (3D printing) have streamlined and sped up the design process. These technologies allow us to achieve design solutions never possible before.”

The “Mono” project will mimic its progenitor by featuring architecture for a Ducati-based single-cylinder engine, but this one sports an upgrade that will blow you away when it’s unveiled at 11:30 a.m. Central Time on Friday, October 8, 2021 at the BADC in conjunction with the Barber Vintage Festival.