This year, the non-profit Iola Old Car Show, Inc. organization of Iola, Wis., will be celebrating 50 years of the Iola Car Show. Upon the occasion, the Old Cars staff sat down to talk “car show” with Clifford Mishler, who was credited with the show’s early success by Chet Krause, founder of the Iola Car Show, Krause Publications and Old Cars magazine.
For the 15 years leading up to Iola’s first car show in 1972, the Iola Lions Club hosted an annual chicken roast on the Sunday after the Fourth of July. Following the 1972 chicken roast, Chet Krause discussed with the staff the idea of inviting area collectors to show up with their collector cars at a special Lions Club event scheduled for later that summer, on Sunday, Aug. 27. This second event was billed as an Iola Lions Club Pork Roast and Donation Auction. Krause sent area car collectors invitations to the event, and 14-17 vehicles attended. The next year, in 1973, another invitation went out to collectors to attend the annual early-July Iola Lions Club Chicken Roast with their collector cars, and the Lions Club chicken roast and car show were fatefully tied together.
At this time, Mishler was publisher of Krause Publications’ numismatics division. Given the success of drawing cars to Iola, and Krause’s drive, his new hobby publication, Krause charged Mishler with making vintage cars an important annual part of the Lions Club’s annual chicken roast the weekend after the Fourth of July. The show blasted off under Mishler’s direction, and he worked to oversee the Iola Old Car Show until its complete management was handed off to the community through the non-profit Iola Old Car Show, Inc., in 1985. In 1990, Clifford became president of Krause Publications, from which he retired in 2002 after 40 years, and he remains an ex-officio board member of the Iola Old Car Show, Inc.
