We Carve The Cones at the 10th Annual GoodGuys Del Mar Nationals
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 despite the fact that the course was hidden 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! Hotchkis had a great showing this year, with our 1970 “E-Max” Dodge Challenger consistently knocking on the 29-second range as the fastest Mopar at the event. Mary Pozzi and her red ’73 Camaro RS took second place overall with several runs in the high 29s, and our C10 Chevy Pickup R&D vehicle made its public debut with about a dozen runs through the autocross. Despite old non-performance tires the bright orange hauler did very well, placing third in the truck class and running times similar to most of the mid-size muscle cars at the event – thanks to its new Hotchkis TVS system that uses stock car style truck-arm suspension.
On the customer car front, our friend Deanna Marengo ran her TVS equipped ’67 Chevelle all weekend and dropped her times over two seconds from practice and a little co-pilot time with John Hotchkis. Another longtime Hotchkis customer and friend, Dick Etchison, made the long drive down from Colorado in his beautiful ’65 Chevelle sedan (or as Chad Reynolds from Bangshift.com likes to call it, a Crew Cab). Until Friday, Dick had never made a pass through an autocross course before. After one run in his TVS equipped Chevelle, Dick had an ear-to-ear grin and ended up running all weekend and dropping his into the mid-30s, very respectable for a newcomer to the sport! Albert Melchior from Carbon Kustoms in Canada also made a long drive down with his fantastic 2nd Gen Firebird, which is running a complete Hotchkis TVS along with A-Arms. Both Albert and Bill Howell ran the ‘Bird repeatedly all weekend and did quite well with runs in the low 30s. Other notable customer cars include Chad Ryker with a stunning bright red ’67 Camaro and our buddy Greg Hohman in his deep blue ’71 Chevelle – both cars were very competitive and did well on the course.
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 Hotchkis rig and our complete autocross team in about a month at GoodGuys Orange County Get Together May 15th and 16th!