ALL ABOUT SPEED

Last weekend, as you may have seen on the twitter feed, I was able to go to the big auto show that was in town at the Tampa Convention Center! As an car lover, I felt this wold be an excellent opportunity to see what the recovering industry had up their sleeves. It was a great time!

Most known automakers were represented and had differing displays from the rather disappointing showing from Volkswagen to the gigantic 60,000 square feet of GM’s show. What I liked best about the show is that it’s basically like going to your local dealer- minus the test drive of course, but also minus the pressuring salesman! I could get in a car, look at the engine, look in the trunk, and ask questions if I wanted to without being bothered. If you’re in the market for a new car and have an auto show coming to town, I highly recommend this way of researching.

I’ll have to divide my coverage of the event into 3 posts, since it will be too big to make it into one. Being able to see exotics and other show cars is always an exciting factor. Sadly (and smartly), you aren’t allowed to sit and much less touch these cars. Upon entering the first floor, you were able to venture into a special section of the show, which had custom dragsters and collectibles.

There were a handful of custom hot rods, made using old school chassis. Look at the engine on this one. the belts were wider than my hand. I cant imagine the amount of HP this baby makes. I should have taken a picture of the tires. Over 12 inches wide, at the least. This one was by far the most impressive.

Up next was an old school Corvette convertible. I’m not exactly sure what year this one was, but I’ll guess and say its a body style from the 60′s. Clean car, and it seemed 100 percent OEM. Has to be worth 100K+.

Speaking of Corvettes, someone had a very sharp C5 and had decided t to give it a Blue Angels theme after the notorious air show planes! The custom lighting was most impressive, not to mention the intricate details that the owner had given the seats and mats.

The annual import versus V8 ACDelco Drag Masters 2008 was as action-packed as the last two years, and again the win went to the V8s.

It’s generally accepted that sequels struggle to match the original movie and unfortunately it seems to that Drag Masters has followed that trend. Notwithstanding some very good ideas, Drag Masters Part III felt a little bit flat despite some very good racing, mainly due to an ineffective sound system that left everybody on the right-hand spectator bank completely in the dark about what was happening. The only speaker that could be heard was pointed behind the timing tower, so if you wanted to hear what was going on there was no way you were going to see it. That, coupled with some very long breaks for timing system malfunctions, meant boredom set in and many left early. However, enough negativity, there were some big positives. Originally conceived to attract a younger crowd to a more traditional meeting, the first Drag Masters promoted its V8 versus Import pairings before the event, while Drag Masters II paired competitors up on the day. Though missing out on an opportunity to build media hype, the racing was much closer, as was the score line. Drag Masters III used a combination of hyping the star attractions, boosted by way of handing out free posters at other key events and heavy radio advertising, and matching everybody else who turned up together to make up the other pairings. And it was probably the most exciting racing yet.

First up, Mark Bardsley let rip with an 11,000rpm burnout that ended abruptly when something fell off. Rod Harvey’s incredible new Celica sounded awful, but took an easy solo and started what initially looked like an Asian avalanche of wins. Carl Jensen’s Toyota dropped a 7.92 on the Kevin McGregor Camaro’s 8.18, and Wayne Grimmer fouled away an easy win to Tony Markovina’s screaming blue Mazda smoke machine. Thankfully, Gary Bogaart put an end to the V8 losing streak in his gorgeous new BF Falcon race car, but the massacre started up again right away. A good example of how great a job track staff had done in matching up the cars had to be Dave Levine’s big red Belvedere versus Adam Wiggs’s freshly debuted yellow Skyline: 9.42 Mopar to 9.46 Nissan — shame about the nap on the Xmas tree, Adam. Another close one was Robbie Ward’s RB30-powered 240Z beating Ron Olsen’s Mustang by seven hundredths, another tough loss, as was Aaron Jenkins’s street-driven HQ Monaro — 9.89 to Brad Johnson’s 9.88. At the end of the round 10 Jappa victories had been recorded against six V8 wins — not a good look for us dinosaur lovers.