Antique & Classic Cars Blog

Walking the fairgrounds drooling at cars my friends, neighbors and classmates had in high school–many restored or hopped up way beyond the Bondo-fenders ‘n headers condition of yore–was such a hoot, another day was barely enough.

Everywhere you go, superb muscle cars and street machines are scattered around the fair streets like Hondas on 35W. Engines rumble and race in call and response.

A favorite spot again today was beside the dynomometer for the Power to the Wheels contest. This 2002 Camaro acquitted itself very well, showing 640 HP at the wheels. Yo! Doesn’t even have an induction sculpture suitable for the Walker jutting out the hood. The supercharged 398 ci truck engine looked, sounded and performed great.

One of the best roars of the day came from a light green Chevelle that made 1250 HP on the first pull. Had to cool before the second and the friends I was with wanted to see more cars. Unfortunately I didn’t snap a picture–too busy grinning like a fool. Amazing sounds, though, and very well presented car.

Couldn’t help snapping some oddballs too. Most buyers took the Chevette in econo trim, but check the right boxes and Chevy would build one up for the strip just like this fully stock Chev-Voom. Not.

Another curiosity was this front-engined dune buggy. While it’s the same color as the cartoon Speed Buggy, more or less, Speedy was rear-engined. (Cartoons were the soul food of my youth.)

I generally prefer the stock to the Street Machine look, but this ex-327 Chevy turned out very, very nice. The owner got it from California, where it sat under a tree. Water got into the trunk and rotted it out, so it needed some sheetmetal work despite its California home. The 327 was a 2-bbl automatic, as I recall, in need of a rebuild.

The owners, father and son, did this nice body and paint work (or had it done) and threw a Corvette crate motor into the engine bay, which they hopped up with a few speed goodies. Tremec stick ups the creds in my book. They were from Phoenix and this is a Camaro that would be terrific fun to flatfoot on a desert highway.

Here’s a nice trio of American muscle. You can take in sights like this all day….

A lot of people mention this show among their favorites. Rightly so. It’s a lot more than a buncha parked cars.

This entry was posted on Saturday, July 26th, 2008 at 8:28 pm and is filed under Events. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.