Jay, I wish you guys all the luck. Dealing with the Autorama guys is gonna be a very rough road at best. What you really need is some kind of council to represent the bike portion of the show. Maybe one made up of a few bike club representatives but also a couple of car guys that show regularly. If you could get the support of a couple of car clubs that attend the show, I think you'd stand a good chance of taking things to the next level. The Autorama guys are all about money and let's face it, the money just doesn't flow for the bike portion like it does for the cars.
One of the biggest problems when a specfic club runs a show is that they tend to be one sided when it comes to picking the winners. They might not intend for it to happen but at the same time they wanna see their members win. And let's face it, the more club members that win the more new club members. Every year since the FreakBike Militia started showing in Detroit our numbers have increased and a lot of the guys that have shown long before we arrived are now sporting FBM signs, stickers, shirts and other FBM/FBN paraphanalia. Great for our group but I think it could be a little intimidating to others.
It's sad to say but the other aspect that sometimes happens is that bicycle, motorcycle and car club take on a thug mentality and wanna portray a bad guy image. I'm not saying that this is the case but it can reflect on how much a sponsor is willing to put into an event and it definitely is watched by the Autorama people. Remember Autorama is a family event. Exhibitors need to watch their mouths and act appropriately when showing. Nothing's worse than taking your wife/girlfriend and kids to a show and then having to put up with a bunch of drunk high-ons standing around F-bombing every other word while grabbing their crothches in between syllables. Too much of this garbage and the bike show gets tossed! It's happened with some of the car guys in Detroit over the years.
The judges in Detroit are made up of custom bike guys, roadies, restored bike guys, car guys and people from all other walks of life.
If you are interested in finding out about some of the ins and outs of how the Autorama people think and what their looking for, try to contact BicycleDon. He's a member on this board as well as FBN. I can't say he has the answers that you may need but he's been around the Autorama bike show for quite awhile.