Tomorrow!

http://www.hotrod.com/upcomingevents/113_0404_run/

Mike, I posted this in the Camaro Cruiz in section but, I don't know what happened to it. I just heard/read about it a couple weeks ago and I already have something planned for Sunday (it would be a tough hall for me to make it back to No Cal in time). It looks like a very cool event and it is for a good cause, I wish I could pull it off.

If you go please post and tell me/us how it was. There are supposed to be more of these events.

Well, I drove up Friday morning, expecting to see lots of muscle cars heading toward Bakersfield. As it turned out, there were about 20-25 cars on the run. The Hot Rod guys were driving a silver Chevy SSR, a couple of guys from GM had a silver Cadillac XLR, and the guys from Hot Rod TV were in a red Viper. Other cars were a nice silver '69 Camaro, a late model stroked Firebird 383, a late model Vette, a '68 or so Ford Fairlane convertible, a '72 Camaro, a '68 or so Pontiac G body, an early 70's (I think) El Camino and a '68 Plymouth Barracuda fast back among others.

My favorite was a 1965(?) Plymouth Valiant convertible, driven by an older guy who used a cane, had a handicapped sticker on the rear view mirror and historic car plates on the car. I initally thought that he simply had an older car and wanted to go for the drive. Boy was I wrong. He pulled up to a gas pump while I was filling the Camaro. That little Valiant sounded MEAN! I walked over and asked him whether it was a 273. He shook his head and said, no, it was a stroked 360 now displacing 408 CI. He had a built automatic in it, a 3500 stall converter and 4.10 gears in the rear. He takes it to the drags frequently, and does all the work on the car himself.

The trip itself was a lot of fun. During the inital run out of Bakersfield up to Tehachapi, some of us got a little wild, as the Hot Rod TV guys in the Viper tried to get to the front of the group so they could get some footage. Now, with a bunch of fast cars heading down the road, an aggressive move to the front of the line had to be responded to. Anyway, I ended up backing off when I remembered that the last time I hit 130 in the Camaro, I lost the front windshield chrome trim. (BTW: Any suggestions on how to make it more secure?)

Once we left Tehachapi, people settled down and simply toured, enjoying the stares of traffic we passed as the stream of muscle cars drove by.

I had to bail out about half way through the day, but still had a great time. I highly recommend these one day "Power Runs," and hopefully Hot Rod will do more to publicize them in the future.

BTW, the publisher of Hot Rod, who was on this inaugural "Power Run," mentioned that they expect 200,000 people to participate in this year's Power Tour.

Mike,
Thanks for the update, I would have loved to have been there. I will try to keep an eye out for the next one. Sounds like you had fun, car shows are fun but, I like to see, hear, watch, them run graemlins/thumbsup.gif