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Arlington, Texas – Day 1 of the 2013 Hot Rod Power Tour
I felt right at home as it rained; it made me feel like I was back in England at an American car show rather than here in Texas. The only difference was the rain was brief and warm compared with the UK rain, which is usually cold, and once it starts, persists. The variety of vehicles at the show today was incredible and was ever changing as some people arrived early, some arrived later, and there were cars constantly moving around the show areas.
I parked my 2010 ZR1 up in a shaded spot, having visited a local car wash on the way from the hotel this morning. The ZR1 survived the worst of the weather that Missouri could throw at me on Thursday afternoon, which had removed all the dead stuff accumulated from Illinois to Joplin, Missouri, my Thursday night stopping point. Friday’s drive from Joplin thru Oklahoma to Dallas had added another layer of suicidal entomology which the jetwash quickly dispatched. I would just like to take a moment to wish the people of Oklahoma all the best, as I was watching the Weather Channel and local Fox coverage of the unfolding disaster last night and it looked like scenes from a Hollywood movie.
We were soon joined by a silver C5 Z06 and a black ’09 C6 ZR1, owned by a couple from Corpus Christi, Texas. Later a couple more C6’s parked opposite – funny how Vette owners feel safer parked with other Vette owners! Hopefully we can organize to park more of the long haul Corvettes together as the week goes on. Tomorrow we have a drivers’ briefing from 7AM and the plan is to depart for Texarkana at 8:30 and arrive around midday.
I’ve added a selection of my pictures below and there is a bigger set up on my Facebook page [2] – if you’re not already my friend, send me a request and assuming you only have one head and an eye either side of your nose I will probably accept you so you can see all the pictures…
Look out for my update tomorrow from Texarkana…
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Someone from Arizona seriously planned ahead with this plate on their seriously orange Chevy Nomad.
[5]As I was leaving this yellow C6 turned up, and to the untrained it looks like any other C6 except this is actually a super-rare C6RS built by Pratt & Miller and cost new about double the price of a ZR1! This one is running with the Michigan plate C6RS001 so I am really hoping the owner is a long hauler so I can get to talk to him one day this week.
[6]Bobby and Carolyn Buttram from Corpus Christi, Texas parked their black ’09 ZR1 next to my Jetstream Blue ’10 ZR1.
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[13]My first car was an MGB, though it had the proper chrome bumpers being a ’68, not like this later model American spec.
[14]The engine in this car was pretty amazing and I suspect gave the car a little (okay a lot) more horsepower than the 1.8L four cylinder my one used to have. On the bright side I think I would probably not have made it past my 18th birthday if I had been able to squeeze this much horsepower under my hood.
[15]I bumped into Mark Webster from the North Shore Corvette Club, one of my local clubs up in Illinois. He had decided to bring his beautiful Chevy Impala.
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The car is fitted with a 572CI Big Block motor and you can see this from the subtly altered fender flags.
[18]This looks like a very nice Morris Minor Traveler which is exactly the same car even to the color that I learned to drive in when I was 14 on the taxiways of the local airport in the UK.
[19]The big difference with this is car is the airless wheels or “tweels” as Michelin calls them.
[20]This was my favorite car of Day 1, a rat rod called Wednesday Night Special II. It was running a turbocharged LS1 motor and was just an amazing piece of engineering.
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Day 2 after the jump…
Texarkana, Arkansas – Day 2 of the 2013 Hot Rod Power Tour
Early morning drivers meeting back at the University parking lot in Arlington before we headed off to Texarkana, Arkansas… The drive started off with about 30 miles of interstate, then onto traditional back roads of America. It seems a lot of the locals knew we were coming and were sitting out watching and waving as we passed. Some had even brought out their classic cars and parked them at the end of the driveways so that their cars could watch the passing cars, maybe dreaming that one day their owner would take them on the tour.
We passed through countless traditional small towns with a Main Street and businesses owned and run by local people. Rarely did we see any chain restaurants except for DQ and Sonic, which, with their retro/nostalgic feel somehow seemed right. Local classic car clubs had parked up on the route and this added further to the feeling of nostalgia. We eventually arrived at the Fairgrounds in Texarkana about 3 PM as we had stopped at one of the Dairy Queen restaurants for lunch, and so a lot of the Long Haul cars had already arrived along with the locals who were attending just this day of the tour.
Having spent a couple of hours at the show we then headed into town to find somewhere to eat and drink – having checked out www.bringfido.com [25] which is a brilliant website for traveling dog owners as it lists hotels, restaurants, parks, and the like where your surrogate child is welcome – we found a great bar called the Icehouse which allowed Rupert our Chihuahua to sit out the front on the covered porch area where most of the locals were drinking. We got chatting to a few of them and the food was good, so a pleasant couple of hours and pints passed before we headed to our hotel for the night.
Our stupid GPS (okay, maybe it was the driver) managed to take us to the “wrong” La Quinta, so having unloaded the car, walked to reception, and queued for check-in, I was told the “right” La Quinta was the one on the other side of the interstate. Ten minutes later we checked into the correct hotel!
To complete the feeling of nostalgia the La Quinta we are staying at in Texarkana has internet, but sadly not in the room we are staying in, which is the furthest one from the reception. Hopefully tonight in Little Rock we will be back in the 21st century not the 1950’s, at least as far as communications are concerned.
A full set of my pictures from Day 2 can be found on Facebook [26] – here’s the highlights:
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[47]Little Rock, Arkansas – Day 3 of the 2013 Hot Rod Power Tour
Texarkana to Little Rock Arkansas on Day 3 saw the Hot Rod Power Tour traveling through some beautiful scenery. Arkansas has some beautiful roads which would have been empty but for about 2,000 Hot Rods! All was going well until we got to Glenwood, when we joined a Hot Rod-induced traffic jam which we assumed was for another stop sign. Sadly not, for one of the tour participants had managed to park their car on its roof on a bridge.
Thankfully no one was hurt but the car will need roof repainting, I suspect. We bailed out due to the traffic queue and headed for the Interstate, which we can now do using the Corvette’s GPS! In Texas and Missouri on my way down from Illinois I discovered that in these days where you can get pretty much everything onto a memory stick, GM seem to require 2 DVD disks to hold the GPS information for a Corvette, and of course I can only find the wrong disk which is the Eastern USA and Canada. I stopped at a Chevy dealer en-route to be told that to buy the disk(s) was going to cost me $225! Seriously GM, that sucks – I can buy a proper modern standalone GPS by Tom Tom or Garmin for that price!
The Little Rock State Fairgrounds played host to the Hot Rod Power Tour today and I was lucky enough to catch up with Mike Atkins from Pratt & Miller who is running the C6RS on the tour this year. The car is actually being driven by Joe Parks, General Manager of Pilot Transport, one of the tour sponsors. Mike was telling me about the C6RS which started life as a 2008 C6 Z06 before Pratt & Miller worked their magic on the car. The engine is a 427 Z06 bottom end with custom internals including Eagle Rods and the top end is modified LS9 supercharger. All this means the car is good for about 800 crank horsepower!
Today we head to Memphis, Tennessee so hopefully Elvis will be at the show…
Here’s a selection of C6.RS photos for your viewing pleasure:
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[57]Memphis, Tennessee – Day 4 of the 2013 Hot Rod Power Tour
The drive today from Little Rock, Arkansas to Memphis, Tennessee was through flat farmland mainly devoted to rice, and previously, cotton. We passed through an almost-ghost-town called Cotton Plant [58] where a few hardy souls (649 as of the 2010 census, to be precise) were still living amongst the neglect and decay. We passed one lady out cutting her lawn, while next door stood a once-magnificent church that was now abandoned with a huge section of the roof missing. A few of the Power Tourists stopped to take pictures of their older car in front of the atmospheric backdrop of the abandoned gas station and stores on the main street.
[59]The Chevelle in this picture is the one featured prominently on the promotional material for this year’s tour, and I had the pleasure of speaking to the owner yesterday morning in Texarkana. The same group of owners of the six cars featured are on tour again this year; just some of them have brought different cars. His best friend since first grade is also on tour with his son in a blue Chevelle, and that sort of exemplifies the people I have met so far on tour. Friends and family enjoying the American countryside together and then hanging out at a car show once the driving part of the day is done.
[60]Today we rocked up at the Memphis International Raceway [61] for the car show and some drag racing. I would have loved to have drag raced the ZR1 but it was very hot and there was a massive queue for a run, so I’ve decided to hold fire until Friday at Mooresville, South Carolina. Tomorrow however, I will be doing the autocross at Hoover, Alabama, assuming we complete the 300 miles from Memphis in a reasonable time and I can do the planned broadcast live via Skype on my iPad for the next Corvette Web Blast [62]. My cunning plan is to stop somewhere en-route tomorrow and set up so that I can show the Power Tourists passing as I talk to the studio back in the UK. This might work, or then again it might not, but it seemed like a good idea when I thought of it…
[63]An Illinois-registered Corvair / Corvette caught my eye as it had a mid-engine Corvette powerplant in a Corvair chassis.
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[78]Larry Larkin from the Buda Gearheads club in Texas with his 1993 C4 Corvette.
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[81]This GTR body kitted Corvette will definitely divide opinion.
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My full set of pictures from today can be found on Facebook [84] – Hoover, here we come!
[85]Birmingham, Alabama – Day 5 of the 2013 Hot Rod Power Tour
[86]Queuing for the Autocross.
We went from Memphis, Tennessee to Birmingham, Alabama today and it was both an interesting and very scary day. We skipped some of the route today, dropping down into Mississippi on the US72 which became the AL157, which was a great road for doing the miles as it was mainly straight two lane blacktop with few people using it. The scary bit came after we had stopped so I could do my live report for the Corvette Web Blast; we were driving down I65 north of Birmingham following two other Power Tourists in the inside lane when a semi in the middle lane had the rear passenger side tire explode on the trailer just between the two cars ahead.
We had to swerve onto the right shoulder to avoid the worst of the debris scattered on the highway. Ironically, the rig was hauling tires! The second scary thing was a massive thunderstorm again on the I65 north of Birmingham, which forced us off of the interstate and onto the back roads for the last five miles of our trip.
I finally got to Hoover, Alabama for the Hot Rod Power Tour Day 5 car show after 4 PM and immediately joined the queue for the Autocross. I only had time for one run of 40.008 seconds; no idea how good/bad it was, as I didn’t get to see any other posted times. I then proceeded over to the show area to take some pictures of the cars and again, the variety was amazing as you can see from the selection below.
[87]Loved this pickup truck with an air ride suspension…
[88]Ominous skies before a second massive thunderstorm of the day dumped on all the participants just as we left the show. On the bright side my car doesn’t need cleaning…
[89]A Trabant doing the autocross.
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My complete set of pictures from today are up on Facebook [108].
[109]Chattanooga, Tennessee – Day 6 of the 2013 Hot Rod Power Tour
Birmingham, Alabama to Chattanooga, Tennessee today, with beautiful weather and some great countryside. The run into Chattanooga along the Lookout Mountain Parkway [110] was particularly beautiful and the views from either side of the valley were stunning. As our hotel last night was at Fultondale, north of Birmingham, we skipped the first 60 miles of the route from Hoover and joined at a town called Oneonta, Alabama. A local policeman had the forethought to block off one lane of the intersection with his cruiser and a few cones to allow all of the Power Tourists to turn right without having to wait for the oncoming traffic – good job, Mr. Policeman!
The show today was at the Chattanooga State Community College [111], and apart from the speed humps on campus, it was a great venue with ample car parking spaces to display all of the tour cars.
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[116]Corky Coker presides over the festivities…
[117]From 5 PM until 9 PM in downtown Chattanooga, Corky Coker opened up Coker Tires [118] to the Power Tour participants and seemed to have closed down about four blocks of the town.
I also found out today that a race-prepared Trabant with 2 cylinders and 26 brake horsepower can beat a 638 horsepower Corvette ZR1 by 0.009 seconds on an autocross course, but as a consolation, I found from speaking to others my Corvette was the fastest Vette!
My full set of Day 6 pictures are up on Facebook [119] – Looking forward to the drag racing tomorrow, assuming Andrea [120] doesn’t come along and ruin it.
[121]Concord, North Carolina – Day 7 of the 2013 Hot Rod Power Tour
We went from Chattanooga, Tennessee to Concord, North Carolina and we had a fantastic, long, and slow drive today. The scenery driving through the Appalachians in Tennessee and then North Carolina was certainly the most spectacular of the tour, and the planners definitely saved the best and longest drive for last.
The mist hung low over the rapids on the rivers cutting their way through the narrow gorges to the left and right of the twisting road. The clouds sat amongst the trees that clung to the steep sides of the hills and mountains, and the overcast sky gave a suffocating feel as though a great weight was pressing down from above. Although a slow drive, it is one that everyone should do – take the TN64 from Cleveland, Tennessee which becomes the 74 as it crosses into North Carolina, and you will not be disappointed. Take your swimming trunks and you might be tempted to join one of the many brightly colored rafts filled with tourists setting off down the river.
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[124]The front spoiler of this ZR1 is showing the battle scars of the last week.
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[135]Lingenfelter have had their wicked way with this one.
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[137]This gentleman had completed the tour from his home in Seattle!
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The final 100 miles into Concord, North Carolina just north of Charlotte was mainly interstate, but this seemed to take forever to complete. We detoured off route to our hotel just south of Charlotte so that I could offload all of our luggage from the back of the ZR1. It is surprising just how much luggage the car will swallow – definitely a class above Lamborghini, Ferrari and Porsche when it comes to luggage space.
The reason for the luggage offload was so that I could do the drag racing at the ZMax Dragway [140], which is a unique 4 lane drag strip and an extremely modern facility. I arrived only to be told because of the rain shower that had just fallen, the drag racing had been cancelled. Did I want to queue up 2 hours to enter the world’s largest burnout competition? Er, no thanks! Have you seen the price of a set of new rear Michelins for a ZR1? Thought not…
Overall, I would have to say the ZR1 has met with universal approval. We were woken up last night at 3:40 AM by someone passing our motel room praising the car as the one he would have above a Ferrari. Thanks, but next time please tell your mates quietly so as not to wake the owner! The car has received so many comments, and everyone seems to recognize it as a ZEE RRR 1 rather than just a Corvette.
I have had complements from young and old, black and white, ladies and gents all seem to think the car is both beautiful and fast. The car has so far done 2600 miles on this trip and performed faultlessly, which, given it is a 2010 model, is hardly surprising but it rides beautifully, handles well, can handle our luggage requirements, and when prodded goes like a stabbed rat (this is an English expression for rather quick). My only complaints about the car are it has a bit of drinking problem compared with my previous Z06 in that it averages about 18 MPG, and also even with the Mild2Wild switch permanently in Wild it is way too quiet. I might have to rectify this…
My overall impression of the Hot Rod Power Tour is I have absolutely loved it. For me the highlight has been the driving on roads I would not normally drive on, and seeing parts of America that I would normally bypass on the Interstate for the sake of speed. In the future I will try to plan routes away from the Interstate, as there is a huge variety of places to be seen and explored if people just took the effort to seek them out.
My final day’s pictures are up on Facebook [141] for those who are interested…