Pencil this into your calendar for Sunday, September 16:  The finest vintage car event of its ilk, the Ypsilanti Orphan Car Show. Here’s an advance with all the necessary info and a preview photo gallery. 

WHAT: The 2015 Ypsilanti Orphan Car Show

WHEN: Sunday, September 17, 2017, 9 AM to 4 PM

WHERE: Riverside Park, Ypsilanti, Michigan (map here)

HOW MUCH: $6 per adult, children under 12 free

So, you may very well ask, what is an orphan car, anyway? Orphan is the hobby’s  affectionate term for the castoffs and misfits of the collector car world—the lapsed and failed brands that make automotive history so rich and fascinating. The strict definition of an orphan make can get a bit complicated, and it seems to be fairly elastic as well, but we leave all that fine whittling to the show’s expert organizing team. As veteran attendees of the Ypsi Orphan Show, here’s what we know you will usually find on the display field at Riverside Park:

Packards, Studebakers, Hudsons, Nashes, Hupmobiles, Kaisers, Frazers, Willys-Overlands, Reos, King Midgets, Maxwells, Tuckers, Franklins, Corvairs, Edsels…

And many, many more lost and forgotten automotive makes. In recent years, names including Oldsmobile and Pontiac have been added to the roster, and the featured make  for 2018 will be Chrysler’s recently orphaned brand, Plymouth.

The Ypsi Orphan Show is widely regarded around the collector car world as the finest event of its kind: Copied, but never equaled. For more background info, please check out the event’s Facebook page. And if you consult the tag cloud in the left gutter of our home page, you’ll find loads of previous event coverage.