It all depends on your point of view, I suppose. It is adequate to have a good competition, so from that point of view, yes, it's good. On the other hand, the first year I ran the competition we had over 40 entries, so from that standpoint it's weak.
I've run two polls asking people why they don't submit images. The most common answer was that they didn't know about the contest; nothing I can do there. The second most common answer was that they thought their cars weren't "show car material" and therefore not calendar-worthy. I can tell you without a doubt that a lot of the cars that have appeared, I have seen in person, and they have their share of bruises and blemishes, but they're not really obvious in photos. Anyway, we specifically opened the competition to projects this year, which I hoped would make those folks feel more confident about submitting.
Another issue is that several people with both nice-looking cars and good photography skills submitted a lot of shots in past competitions. This may have led some people to feel they couldn't compete. That's why I wrote the advice thread on taking pictures of cars. I'm not sure if it helped, or made people think that if it required that much advice they didn't have a chance. On the other hand, for various reasons, the high caliber photographers kind of disappeared, so the net result is, again, fewer submissions. Every year about a half dozen people will say "I won X year(s) ago, so I thought I'd give someone else a chance" which is a nice thing to do, but it still results in fewer submissions.
