A show board is the only part of your build that works while you are away from the car. It answers the questions you would otherwise answer ninety times in an afternoon, and it keeps answering them at nine in the morning when you are still in the coffee queue.
Most boards fail the same way: too much text, too small, and nothing that makes a stranger want to stay. This is what goes on a good one, how to lay it out so it reads from a few metres back, and a build sheet you can copy straight into a document.
What a show board is actually for
Someone walking a row of two hundred cars gives yours a few seconds, and your board maybe twenty. In that time they are asking three things: what is it, what has been done to it, and is there a story here. If your board answers those three, you have earned the conversation. If it opens with a paragraph, they have already moved on.
The second job matters just as much. A board takes the repetitive part of the day off you. You stop reciting the same engine spec and start talking about the parts people actually ask about once they have read it, which is usually the money, the mistakes and the timeline.
The six things every board needs
Nearly every board worth reading has these six, in roughly this order. Everything else is optional, and most of it is noise.
- Year, make, model. Add the chassis or generation code if your crowd uses it. This is the headline, and it should be readable from further away than anything else on the board.
- Engine and drivetrain. What it is, what feeds it, what it drives through. Two lines is plenty.
- Power, with the caveat. Say whether it is at the wheels or at the crank, what fuel it was run on, and roughly when it was measured. A number with no context reads as a guess, because usually it is one.
- The mods that changed the car. Five to eight lines, grouped by area. Not the full parts list, not the consumables.
- One line of story. Where it came from, what went wrong, why this car. This is the line people repeat to whoever they are with.
- Who to ask or follow. Your name, your club, your handle, or a QR code. Without it the board is a dead end.
Modern build or classic restoration: two different boards
The template changes depending on what you brought. A modified modern car is a build line: what the car was, what has been changed, what is next. The interesting content is the decisions, so give the mods room and keep the history short.
A restored or original classic is a provenance sheet: delivery date, original colour code and trim, production numbers, what is original versus restored, who did the work, and any documented history. Here the mods list shrinks to almost nothing and the history takes the space. Judges and older visitors read this board top to bottom, so it can afford more words than a modern build sheet can.
If you are somewhere in the middle, a restomod or a period-correct build, say so on the board. A line like "kept factory where it matters, upgraded where it does not" saves the argument before it starts.
Build sheet, show board or dash card
Three formats, three jobs. Most people eventually run two of them.
- Windscreen build sheet. A4 or Letter portrait, propped inside the windscreen or laid on the dash facing out. Read from about a metre, so it can carry more detail and smaller type. Cheapest thing to reprint when a spec changes.
- Freestanding show board. A2, or 18 by 24 inches, on a stand beside the front wheel. Read from two to three metres, so it needs big type and few words. Keep the top edge around waist height and set it back from the panel so it never blocks the shot people are trying to take.
- Dash card or tent card. A5 folded so it stands on its own. Good for a casual meet where a full stand would look like too much effort, and good as a backup when the wind picks up.
Whatever you print, laminate it matte rather than gloss. Gloss throws the sun straight back at whoever is reading, and a board nobody can read is the same as no board. Weight the base of any stand, because a light board on a breezy morning ends up face down under someone else's car.
Layout that reads from two metres back
Legibility is mostly type size and hierarchy. A rule of thumb used in signage is roughly 25 mm of capital-letter height for every ten metres of reading distance, and that is the minimum for something read once, not something read comfortably. For a board people stand a couple of metres from, that puts your body text at about 8 to 10 mm cap height and your headline four or five times bigger.
- Three levels, no more. Headline, spec block, footer. If a fourth size appears it is usually because you tried to fit something that should have been cut.
- Label left, value right. Two columns beat a centred list every time, and a centred spec list is the single most common layout mistake at a show.
- Group by area. Engine, drivetrain, suspension and brakes, wheels and tyres, body, interior. People scan for the section they care about.
- Contrast over styling. Dark text on a light board, or light text on a genuinely dark one. Matching the board to your paint colour usually costs you contrast.
- About sixty words of prose, total. The story line, plus maybe a credit. Everything else should be a label and a value.
The free build-sheet template
Copy the block below into any document, replace the values, and print it at A4. It is deliberately plain text so it works in whatever you already have open, and the field order matches the way people read: identity, mechanical, then story.
BUILD SHEET YEAR MAKE MODEL 1998 Nissan Silvia S14 Kouki OWNER / HANDLE Your name - @yourhandle ENGINE SR20DET, GT2871R turbo, E85 POWER 312 kW at the wheels, dyno March 2026 DRIVETRAIN 6-speed manual, 1.5-way LSD SUSPENSION / BRAKES Coilovers, adjustable arms, 4-pot front calipers WHEELS / TYRES 18x9.5 +12 front, 18x10.5 +15 rear, semi-slicks PAINT / BODY Resprayed Midnight Purple II, Kouki front conversion INTERIOR Fixed-back seats, half cage, factory dash kept THE STORY Bought as a rolling shell in 2019. First time every panel has been straight since. BUILT BY Me, my brother, and my local workshop SCAN FOR MORE [ QR CODE ]
Three fields decide whether the board works, and they are the three people rush:
- Power. Either give it context or leave it off. "About 300 at the wheels, untuned" is more credible than a round number with nothing behind it.
- The story. One sentence, in your own voice. Not "a lifelong passion for cars" — something that only applies to this car.
- The handle. Check it is spelled right and check the account is public before you print two hundred copies of it.
Example boards, by build type
The six fields stay the same; the emphasis moves. A headline and a story line for each common build, to steal the shape of:
- Track or time attack. Lead with the lap time and the circuit, not the power. "2:08.4 at the local circuit, street registered." The mods list should read like a reason for that number: aero, brakes, cooling, seat.
- Stance and show. Lead with the wheel spec, offsets included, because that is the first thing anyone asks. Story line covers the fabrication: what had to be cut, notched or made.
- Restomod. Headline the original car, subhead the modern driveline. Say clearly what is original so the purists know you know.
- EV conversion. Battery capacity, motor, range, and who did the high voltage work. Answer the two questions everyone asks: what it cost in weight, and what it does to the balance.
- Daily driver. Own it. Mileage, how long you have had it, what it still does every week. A high-kilometre daily that is immaculate reads better than a pretend garage queen.
- Off-road or overland. Lead with where it has been. Tyre size, gearing, suspension travel, recovery gear, and the trip that justified all of it.
- Drift. Angle, lock, cooling and the cage builder. People want to know if it gets used, so include the last event it ran.
- Original classic. Delivery date, original paint and trim codes, production numbers, and an honest original-versus-restored line. Photos of the car mid-restoration do more work here than any spec.
Adding a QR code
A code on the board does the thing a handle cannot: it removes the typing. People will scan a code standing in front of your car and never remember a username they read once.
- Size it for a walk-up. A common guide is that a code scans from roughly ten times its own width, so a 30 mm printed code is comfortable at arm's length. Make it bigger, not smaller, if the board sits behind a rope.
- Label it. Four or five words telling people what they get: "Scan for the build thread", "Scan to vote". An unlabelled code gets scanned by almost nobody.
- Link something durable. A profile or a page you control, not a link that expires with a free trial.
- Test it printed. On two phones, at the size you actually printed, under the light you will actually have.
There is more to this than fits here — placement on glass, what to link, and how tint and glare change things — in the guide to putting a QR code on your car.
Printed or digital, honestly
Digital display boards turn up at more meets every year, and the honest answer is that they are better at some things and worse at others. Paper is still unbeatable for size and for being readable from across a row.
| What matters | Printed board | Small digital panel |
|---|---|---|
| Readable from | Two to three metres at A2, further if you go bigger | Up close, at the glass — it is a phone-sized screen, not a billboard |
| Changing it | Reprint, which means planning ahead | Edited from your phone, including in the car park |
| How much it holds | A full spec sheet on one sheet | A few short lines at a time, cycling |
| Wind and weather | Needs weights, or it ends up on the ground | Sits inside the glass |
| Power | None | Needs charging, so it is one more thing to remember |
| Cost | A few dollars a print, every time the spec changes | Paid once, reused every weekend |
| Best at | The full story, read from a distance | The handle, the QR and anything that changes week to week |
Most people who run both end up splitting the work the same way: the printed board carries the specs and the history, and the screen carries the one or two things that change — the handle, the link, the "for sale" line, the giveaway.
Mistakes that cost you readers
- A wall of text. The most common one by a distance. If your board has paragraphs, it has a spec sheet hiding inside it.
- Hostile signage. "DO NOT TOUCH" in red capitals sets the tone for every conversation you have that day. A small "please look, don't lean" and a mat or a rope does the same job without making you the person nobody talks to.
- A private account behind the handle. If people cannot see anything after they follow the link, the link was decoration.
- Low-resolution printing. A screenshot blown up to A2 looks like a screenshot blown up to A2. Print from the original file.
- Gloss lamination in direct sun. Matte costs the same.
- Undated claims. A dyno figure with no date and no fuel is the first thing a sceptic picks at.
- Leaving it in the boot. The board only works if it comes out of the car, which is why it belongs on a packing list rather than in your memory. There is one in what to bring to a car meet.
Print a fresh one the week before the season starts, keep a spare in a plastic sleeve, and update the power line the day you get a new sheet. A board that is current is worth more than a board that is beautiful.