Saturday, September 4, 2010

9th Annual Goodguys Mid-Western Nationals at Kansas Speedway was danged-near the perfect car show

Labor Day weekend is one of the biggest car show weekends of the year in Kansas City. Period. There were several events going on all over town, but the biggest was the 9th Annual Goodguys Mid-Western Nationals, held in the infield of Kansas Speedway.

The 2010 event was blessed from above with perhaps the most perfect weather ever bestowed on a car show. Mid-70s, bright sun, light breezes. It was a car show lover's dream.

And as usual, the cars were plenty dream-worthy as well. Honestly, the number of cars seemed a bit down to me compared to year's past, but that doesn't mean we didn't see some 1,500-2,000 cars out there.

Goodguys is primarily a hot rod organization, so the proliferation of Little Deuce Coupes and '40 Fords was understandably strong. But if you read a lot of national magazines, you would have seen quite a few cars that made it to print. Many of these were the cream of the crop.

There were plenty of other types of cars out there as well. Whether you like street machines, factory originals, muscle cars, or lead sleds, they were all on display. The cutoff for the car show was 1972, but the car corral was a little more relaxed on their year requirements, and even that was bigger than most car shows.

There was also a fairly large swap meet, a vendors midway with all the latest hot rod products, an autocross in which vendors were beating the crap out of their cars, and a concession stand at which you could purchase a $5.00 speedway burger.

I've heard some folks shun the Goodguys event because they think it's just a bunch of rich guys with store-bought glamour-wagons. And while those are out there; and by the way, I'm impressed with many of those as well; there are plenty of great homebuilt rides and cars built by individual craftsmen. In fact, there are so many cars, it is impossible to pigeonhole them into one category. There's just a lot of everything, and absolutely something for everyone.

My dad and I spent the day out there with his original old '61 Corvette. And come to think of it, it had the distinction of being the only '61 Corvette. And when we were hanging out by the car instead of walking the field, it was enjoyable to talk with people who stopped to ask questions or pay compliments throughout the day. There were a whole bunch of nice cars out there, so hearing people talk with dad about his was pretty cool.

And speaking of pretty cool, there is a monster-sized slideshow below. With some 350 pictures, it is by far the new record-holder for most photos in one of my stories. I have to say, that is one thing I really like about this new format, I'm not very limited on these slideshows. I hope you enjoy this one.


3 comments:

  1. Thanks for the great pictures, didn't make it there this year.
    Looks like alot of '57 Chevys made it out but not many early model Chevelles, should have brought mine out.
    Excellent pics, thanks again.

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  2. Thanks for the post. I see that my '39 GMC wrecker
    rated two pics. Nice work.

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  3. Haha, yeah, that's right, I did like that wrecker! I didn't think just the front picture was enough to get the point across!

    There were a lot of '57 Chevys. I was kind of taking pictures of them in particular, because I wrote a story about them a few posta ago, and I've been updating that slideshow as I go along.

    We went by the Speedway today to go to the Renn Festival, and I already feel sad that the show is over.

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