The title of your post caught my eye! We have Cars & Coffee here in the Austin area too. We recently had to break it up b/c the really high end cars didn't feel they were getting enough attention in the Leander chapter, so now they do their own event in the ritzy hill country of Austin. Us old car people still go to the Leander one, when it's not ridiculously hot!
Hubby has a '66 Olds Cutlass, his toy car, which we practically stole a few years ago. He enjoys going on joyrides with it, and it is a beautiful car, but not a trailer queen by any stretch. We brought the car out to Cars n Coffee a few times, but we really don't like to just sit outside the car and watch people oogle it. A few times we just locked it up and went looking at the other cars instead!
Maybe your friend needs to sit at one of those events for hours on end. He might realize that the better side of the event is to look at other people's toys, not necessarily stand around with your own toy...