In years past, the first big car show of the year was the GoodGuys Del Mar Nationals, held at a fairgrounds and horse track in a quiet little beach community just north of San Diego. This year our friends at GoodGuys decided to mix things up a bit and kick the season off in Scottsdale with a March show, then push the Del Mar show back to April. Calendar shuffling aside, it was a fantastic event graced with perfect So Cal weather (mid ’70s and Sunny on Friday and Saturday, a bit on the cloudy side on Sunday) and thousands of incredible cars.

The Street Challenge Autocross was in full swing on Friday and Saturday, and that despite the Del Mar show burying the course in the back of the fairgrounds where it’s out of sight from the car show area, it still pulled well over three dozen cars and hundreds of spectators. In fact, on Saturday the autocross grandstands and observation area were standing room only! Amir was driving the ‘70 El Camino from Campbell Auto Restoration in Northern California down to the show, but unfortunately got sidelined with a bad alternator that he had to change in a parking lot with borrowed tools – so he didn’t get the El Camino down to Del Mar until Friday night. With that in mind, we were represented in the Friday autocross by our friends Deanna Marengo in her ‘67 Chevelle SS and Mary Pozzi in her ‘73 Camaro RS. Both vehicles are equipped with Spectre ProFab Muscle Car cold air intakes. There was also a fantastic Subaru Legacy 2.0 Turbo powered ‘57 Volkswagen Beetle running the autocross with a cold air intake the owner built from a Spectre kit, as well as a super clean ‘65 El Camino running a ProFab intake and hpR filter.

Amir got to the show by Friday evening, so on Saturday we were able to run the El Camino and both Brandy and Mike Morrow made several passes. The LS7 powered pro-touring Elky is still getting sorted out, but it performed well with mid 30 second times every pass. Mary ran hard on Saturday, and ended up finishing second overall and first in the participant category. The only car that ran faster belonged to Meier Racing, a very slick little 1965 Mustang notchback with Meier’s sophisticated rocker arm style rear suspension with inboard mounted shocks.

The rest of the event was fantastic, including a wild assortment of street rods, hot rods, muscle cars and customs in the car show and a really diverse manufacturer’s midway filled with friends and allies in the pro-touring community. We’d like to thank everyone who showed up and made this event such a fun one, and a special thanks to Chad Reynolds for doing a bang-up job announcing the autocross all weekend. Look for the Spectre rig and our complete autocross team in about a month at GoodGuys Orange County Get Together May 15th and 16th!

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