Fuel & Gas Championships, Bakersfield, CA

20th Goodguys Hot Rod Nationals, Indianapolis, IN

Mopars at E-Town, New Jersey

Vintage Mopars take over E-Town
Photo and story by: John McCartney

Click here for John's Photo Gallery from Mopars at E-Town

Over the past 20 plus years fans of cool, classic Mopars have made their way to Raceway Park in Englishtown, NJ for a very special event. For three days Raceway Park is turned into one giant Woodstock for Mopar fans. Whether you get turned on by those wild cars and graphics from the late sixties and seventies or the newer Chrysler cars such as the Chargers and 300s all Hemi powered machines were on display!

Friday Mopars versus the World got knocked out by Mother Nature, you simply cannot race in the rain. Thankfully the sun and blue skies lit up the E-town quarter mile on Saturday. The great weather made for a great car show and super racing on the track. Racers took part in all sorts of classes to see who had the baddest of the bad. Over in the car show department trophies were handed out in over sixty categories giving everyone reason to show off their prized Detroit iron. Closing out Saturday’s action was a wild burnout contest with a huge turnout of crazed folks burning rubber till their was nothing left to burn.

Sunday started off with much of the same weather that fans were treated to the day before. The classes on Sunday were changed up to allow some other classic Mopar race cars to have their chance on the drag strip. Among many race cars taking passes down the E-town quarter mile were many vintage Stockers, Super Stockers, Hemi Powered Funny Cars, wild pro stockers and many other classic cars. Hemi Fred brought out his Sox and Martin original Plymouth Duster which gave all the fans a trip back in time.

One class which raced both days and has become a big hit with the fans is the F.A.S.T. folks. While this group of racers has all makes of cars for this event the Mopar guys took center stage. A great turnout of vintage Mopars took the track racing in two classes. Ed Cook took home the win in the first class beating Ralph Barbagallo, both throttling cool Roadrunners. While in the other class Mike Nasi picked up the victory over Scott McKenzie; Nasi was behind the wheel of his very bright green 1971 Plymouth while McKenzie had his 1969 Roadrunner in the runner up spot. For two days fans watched killer side by side racing, a great car show and huge swap meet. Everyone got a chance to go back to the days when muscle cars ruled the drag strips across America.