Covid is still a danger for public events and means too many restrictions for a festival like „Classic Days“ – but it also means a risk too high that the event could be cancelled finally just a few days before the first day of the festival or even literally on that first day.
We had to put the brake
The C-19-situation in Germany is under serious supervision by the authorities. Officially all events are prohibited until September 1rst, 2021.
Since more than four years the classic and motoring festival with concours, demonstration track, club-meeting and picnic areas for classics, with special exhibitions and special displays, with famous drivers and rare cars is called „Festival of Motoring-Culture and Lifestyle“.
As a cultural event the Classic Days had been classified to get permission to run the event days August 6th until 8th, 2021 as planned at the castle of Schloss Dyck near Duesseldorf/Neuss in Germany.
Luckily Classic Days had got the status of a „cultural event“
Although the special permission was given the obligations and restrictions had been very high: Of course testing was a rule, keeping the distance and wearing a face-mask as well.
All this was nothing too difficult and unfortunately under the current circumstances nothing special or nothing nobody woud have had a problem to work with, entering the event to meet friends and enjoy cars.
Nevertheless the authorities claimed the various strict levels of incidences and incidenz-rates to be the barriers in which the event would have been able to take place and run its program.
The day the decision was made to allow Classic Days with 10.000 public guests a day the incidence was 59. Meanwhile it came down to nearly 5. The rules by the officials were: Not higher than 34 otherwise the festival-organisers would have to cancel Classic Days no matter how far preparations would have proceeded or bookings and travelling would have finalized.
Careful decision to postpone Classic Days to 2022
Beginning of June – some four weeks ago – there was still a tendency that incidences would fall constantly, vaccination would develop always and the situation could be stable. On the horizont there was Delta-C-19 coming from India… and it seemed it could spread all over Europe with incidences going up. Today we see: That‘s happening.
What to guess now? Gambling like the Euro2020 football-championship? Unfortunately Classic cars are not of such an importance. The decision was on our side – we had to anticipate the development with our partners and sponsors with the guests, car owners and our international friends. How could we assess the development?
We did this carefully and we decided to postpone Classic Days to 2022.
Looking forward to great reunion next summer
What if the incidence advances? Even one day before the event or on the opening day any incidence higher than 34 would have meant a cancellation. With tents and marquees booked, caterings organised, thousands of tickets sold and people on their way to Schloss Dyck. Maybe we would have even faced closed areas, room cancellations due to quarantine-regulations or even closed hotels with no business at all. All our partners and all our guest would have faced this situation. In a world where a development cannot be controlled by ourselves we simply could not take this risk.
And what we know now: We would have missed all our international friends and participant due to traveling restrictions. No way having Classic Days in 2021- so we had to postpone to 2022.
We ask you for your understanding and your support – and we hope to see you again from August 5th until 7th, 2022 to celebrate the 15th Classic Days. Thanks a lot. All the best to all of you!
All tickets purchased to date for this years edition of the festival „Classic Days“ will stay valid for the event-weekend from August 5th until August 7th, 2022. Further information can be found in the updated FAQ.
