Akron Life June 2023

CANTON LIVING

story by Shawn Davis and photos by John Dunlap, Bryan Gillard and Shawn Davis

MOTOR HEADS Canton Cars & Coffee kicks shows into gear.

Miatas, Mustangs, and Volkswagen GTIs fill an asphalt parking lot where car enthusiasts come together to show off their rides and talk cars for the first 2023 Canton Cars & Coffee show in April. Seventy-four year-old Canton resident Roger Mauter proudly chats about his discontinued British roadster — a stunningly preserved two-door burgundy 1974 Triumph TR6. “I’ve always been a sports car guy,” he says. A light rain steadily beads on about 120 waxed, shined and polished cars for the show in the parking lot of Royal Docks Brewing Co.’s Brewhouse & Cannery, where attendees duck inside for a cup of MMC Coffee Co.’s custom 710 blend. An imported right-handed drive MR2 garners a crowd for a moment — then an impressive pearl white second-generation Pontiac Firebird, then a classic first-gen Volkswagen Rabbit — the forefather of all the generations of GTIs in the lot.

For Mauter, this is what it’s all about — a way to share enthusiasm for car culture, a passing of passion across generations of an American pastime. His friend, 65-year-old Uniontown resident Eric Langreder, drove his white “hot hatch” Volkswagen GTI to the show and also has a Triumph TR6. The two met through the North Coast Triumph Association and do shows from Wisconsin to New Jersey and have been going to Canton Cars & Coffee for the last three years. The group that started about 10 years ago with 10 to 15 people in a parking lot has grown into shows with 300 cars on average. From April to December, Canton Cars & Coffee meets monthly at Royal Docks and does a second show most months that can be off-site. Upcoming dates include June 3 and 17, July 1 and 29, and Aug. 12 and 26.

With a piping hot dark roast in hand and giddy enthusiasm, Mauter and Langreder talk cars. What do you think of car culture now in the United States? Roger Mauter: In our club, most of the members are 50-plus-years-old, some 60. … Now [Eric’s] son is in on it, so he has a Triumph too. Eric Langreder: It’s going to evolve. I don’t think it’s ever going to go away. But it’s defi nitely changing. Most guys like us, we got the cars that we liked when we were younger, that we wanted to have and maybe couldn’t afford. But now it’s different. I think clubs in general are kind of fading for most people — it’s all online stuff. There aren’t a lot of in person clubs.

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akronlife.com | JUNE 2023