I personally polished my peashooter exhaust on my mk2 up for VW Festival on the outside and about 2 inches into the inside, because it looked good.. Fully aware that after a few more hundred miles it might be back to black again. So I see nothing wrong with cleaning the inside. If I do it fully once, then I can spend 2-3 minutes every time I clean the car just topping it up, so to speak.
And with regards to the shows being as you described.. You'll alyways get people that do things like chromed discs (which I'm guessing was not driven on and was swapped at the show.. Otherwise it'd wreck the finish of the chrome! 
Do you not think every car scene in the world is the same though? There'll always people that want to go over the top and push the boundries to create how they want their car to look so I think leave them be.
Fair enough if you'd rather not be at a show.. It's like the people who grumble "VW Internet forums? What a waste of time, they could be using that time to work on their cars!"
Well said, each to their own
Think I may have been taken out of context a bit - I
do admire the way people spend so much time on their cars - it's just not for me - I prefer driving them, not cleaning, hence why mine has road grime on it. I used to be well into the Mini scene and read about a guy who was marked down in Concours for having the wrong colour pipe on his brake servo - said pipe was no longer available anyway, so the guy never showed his car in Concours again because he was so disgusted with how ridiculous he found it. Felt for him as he'd spent many 1000's of hours restoring his car only to be told by Mr Snooty Concours Judge that his car wasn't up to scratch due to a part he couldn't get.
However, I love car shows. i don't do many a year as I find they can get a bit "samey" if you do too many. Nice when I can though.
Don't get me wrong, I don't dislike what the Concours guys do (some of the cars are
AMAZING!) but it's just not my bag. However, if any of the concours boys want to practice on mine for free....
