Popular Hot Rodding Events

The Orange County fairgrounds in Costa Mesa, California, served as the playground for grown-up kids and their cars for the third annual Goodguys Get-Together. Only being the third year for Goodguys in Orange County, it's a baby compared to the veteran California events such as Del Mar, in its ninth year, and Pleasanton, going on 23 years. Though just starting out, this show has proven to draw quite a crowd. Southern California's mild sunny weather suits automotive hobbyists perfectly, and it's only natural for car guys and gals to migrate to its warmth. We weren't blessed with SoCal's usual smell of sun screen, but victim to frequent overcast and temperatures in the 50s--unseasonably cold to the natives. That didn't stop Goodguys' loyal crowd from attending though.

In the waning days of a glorious Midwestern summer, an American tradition sings its familiar encore. Like baseball, hotdogs, family vacations, and concerts in the park, hot rodding elicits a similar warmth from inside. Friday night cruising, car shows, stoplight encounters, and popping a cold one while changing oil on a languid summer day are all uniquely Yank experiences, but our Midwest siblings have it the best. There's no use arguing about it. Maybe it's those bone-chilling winters or the endless springtime rains, but Midwesterners make up for it with plenty to spare after Memorial Day-and they don't let off the gas until Mother Nature puts it all to bed by Thanksgiving.

With 20 years under its belt, fans of the National Muscle Car Association have had a lot of memorable moments. Records have fallen, controversies have raged, and legends have been made as the spectacle of street car racing has unfolded before them. Nothing in recent years, however, has produced the magic from years gone by as the GM Performance Parts LSX Shootout, which was held for the second time in conjunction with the NMCA World Finals in Memphis. It was a big show that was made even bigger, thanks to all the excitement generated by the LSX Shootout.

For many hot rodders, the pinnacle of the event season is the Goodguys PPG Nationals, held the second weekend in July at the Ohio state fairgrounds in Columbus, Ohio. It's a huge gathering, with thousands of cars sprawled across the hundred-acre venue. Veteran attendees know better than to go for just one day-this show needs all three days to get the maximum benefit.

Once upon a time, a sport called drag racing was invented, in which hooligans with hot street cars got organized and took the activity off the road and into a safer venue. Those heady early days were full of discovery and wonderment, as regular guys continuously broke boundaries and captivated audiences with their creativity and driving skill. But recent years have seen the waning of pro drag racing, as the cars have become less like street cars and more like spaceships on a mission to Mars. And while there will always be an audience for nitro-breathing fuelers, the meat-and-potatoes muscle car lover can't be blamed if he chooses to spend his racing dollar where he can see the same kind of cars that are in his garage.

"I've got another one in the car if you want it," says John Clark, Chrysler's head of the Mopar Performance Division. Just when I thought March 28, 2008, couldn't get any better, Clark offers me contraband-a Cuban Monte Cristo torpedo. These haven't been legal to bring into the U.S. since the Kennedy administration. I fire up 5 inches of heaven and become infused with all that's good in the world. My Las Vegas experience-Mopars At The Strip-has now exceeded all my expectations and then some, and it's only Friday, with two more days left of the event.

The Goodguys Rod & Custom Association has long had a reputation-rightly or wrongly-as a magnet for the geriatric crowd. The common misconception is that AARP cards outnumber timecards by 10 to 1, and cabbage patch kids tied to chrome grilles are the only young people in sight. That scenario may have been the state of affairs a few years ago, but Goodguys has seen the light: The older crowd is slowly slipping away from the surly bonds of earth, and is being replaced by a younger, more active, muscle car breed of rodder.

The southern pine barrens of New Jersey are hardly what you envision when you think of that state. You won't find Tony Soprano popping a cap into anybody's skull near Atco-you'd swear you were somewhere in rural Pennsylvania if you were dumped off there blindfolded. As someone who's raced at Atco Raceway many times before, I can say that Atco is "da bomb." A combination of sea-level air, a tailwind, a downhill run, and being nestled amongst thousands of oxygen-producing pines, Atco Raceway is the stuff e.t. dreams are made of.

Every year, the musclecar parts giant, Year One, puts on an epic event near their Braselton, Georgia, headquarters, which is located about half an hour north of Atlanta on Interstate 85. We don't know if it's a coincidence, but that's also in the same neck of the woods as Road Atlanta-one of the country's premier road courses-and Atlanta Dragway, ditto as one of America's top dragstrips. Put these three giants together, and you have the ingredients for a very exciting event that encompasses every niche of the hobby you can imagine. As a point of reference, the Hot Rod Power Tour needs thousands of miles and venues in several states to create something resembling the same experience, only with the Year One Experience, you don't have to take two weeks off to enjoy it, and that's exactly what several thousand fans chose to do the weekend of May 16-18.

Green rolling hills, horse farms, soft spoken words, kind manners, and loads of hospitality would lull most folks into letting their guard down. But don't let the calm faade of a sleepy southern town like Bowling Green, Kentucky, fool you. Big mistake, especially if you're there to race at the NMCA's Seventh Annual NOS Nationals at Beech Bend Raceway. Hot cars, fast times, and big-money racing are a large part of the fabric of this small town, which is about an hour's drive north of Nashville, Tennessee.