Mustangs On The Bay and MOPAR Madnes

Sunday there was two car shows in the area. I knew about the "Mustangs on the Bay" show, but a friend at church told me about the MOPAR show in the Lowe's parking lot. So after church I went to both. MOPAR stand for Motor and Parts of the Parts, Service and Customer Care organization within Chrysler Group. Among car enthusiasts it refers to any car manufactured by the Chrysler Group (Chrysler, Plymouth, Dodge and others) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mopar).

 

I went to the MOPAR  show at Lowe's first. I attended this show last year too. This year there did not appear to be as many cars as last year. But there was still a good spread of cars from old to new and stock to modified. They did a good job of segregating the cars into types and eras.

 

 

After the MOPAR show, I drove to Port Orchard for the Mustangs on the Bay show. I have never been to this show before, but I understand that it is always the weekend two weeks before the other car show, The Cruz. As the name implies, this show was all Mustangs. It filled up almost the entire parking area on the waterfront around the marina. Almost as much as the complete Cruz show. Like the MOPAR show, the cars were parked in order of style, generation and model. That worked well until I thought I had looked at a generation of Mustang only to find there was another section that had sub models(like Cobra or Shelby). Still, it was fun to see all the iterations of the Mustang design and how people have worked hard to keep these cars alive.

 

I spent quite a bit of time looking at the Generation 3(1979-1993) Foxbodies like mine. There was probably about 20 of them scattered through the various sections with about a dozen parked in a row. Some of them were pristine and some not so much. I smugly thought, "mine doesn't look so bad"! I was able to see how some of my missing parts are supposed to be installed and also get idea for future mods. When I got home, I started searching Ebay and located some of my missing interior parts.

 

 Lots of MOPAR's lined up in front of Lowe's.

Lots of MOPAR's lined up in front of Lowe's 

 I believe that this is an early 60's Savoy. But with a big V8 and 4 speed, it was an early muscle car.

The Savoy had a 413 CI V8. It had big cable straps holding it down against the torque. Check out the high rise, cast iron headers. 

 I always like this Dart body style from the early 70's. This was a nicely restored example with a 340 V8 and an aftermarket 5 speed.

 A whole row of Generation 3 Foxbody Mustangs like mine.

I wished mine looked like this! This is a 92 that is heavily modified. 

The 92 had a 5.0 liter V8 with a lot of performance mods: aftermarket heads, manifolds, supercharger and even nitrous oxide. 

This is the "modified" section. Most of the cars here had heavy aftermarket mods done to them. 

 Generation 4 and 5 Mustangs lined up.

 Retired 1991 Police pursuit car. Ford made these for some states for special purpose cars. California ordered 400 at one time. Very similar to mine with the 5.0 V8 and 5 speed, but this is a notchback coupe with beefed up frame, extra alternator for the radios and a 160 MPH speedo!

The MACH 1 section.