Photos and Text by Armin H. Ausejo

With each year, it seems that Subaru’s overall popularity among the car enthusiast crowd grows, and along with that, so does the size and popularity of the West Coast Subaru Show, or “WCSS.”  Since Chris “Tex” Walker fully took over the reigns of the show two years ago at WCSS 11, WCSS has easily grown to be the largest Subaru gathering in the Pacific Northwest, with this year totaling around 360 registered Subarus. This year, WCSS returned to the Skamania Fairgrounds, close to the Oregon border on Highway 14 in Stevenson, Washington.  The facility was quite welcoming to the show two years ago and was happy to have it return.

As usual, plenty of vendors came out in force, each one giving at least some type of product or service away for raffle.  Although the mudpit was not available this year, Waterwerks came through with a go-kart time attack challenge, complete with a trophy for the day’s fastest time.  The all-Subaru car show was once again a major draw, with Jamarri Whiteside once again taking home Best of Show and Jamie Thomas’ Subaru 360 van named “Stanley” taking home the trophy in the new “Subaru Historic” category, for all pre-1972 Subarus.

Perhaps the biggest draw to WCSS is the camping.  Participants were welcome to begin camping on Friday night, often leading to two nights of Subaru enthusiast awesomeness.  The packed campground created a great environment of car enthusiast camaraderie that simply isn’t found at other shows in general, especially when taking into account all of the various model years of vehicles involved.  Almost every generation of Subaru is represented, thus it would be difficult to find any other atmosphere that promotes such a diverse a sense of pride and enjoyment of Subaru ownership.  NWMotiv is definitely looking forward to next year, which undoubtedly promises to be even bigger and better.

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