It was a good show. There were 16 older cars entered, and 2 compacts. No surprise, since no one knew about it ahead of time!
But they made it a good show, ran lots of heats and promoted 9 cars total to the feature. The only thing that sucked was a delay between the heats and the feature to give the people time to fix their cars for the feature (you had to use your heat car in the feature). If there had been more cars, this time would have been filled by a long compact heat.
Yes, there were some *destroyed* cars by the end of the night! Some people didn't fully take advantage of what the rules allowed. And some just couldn't stand up to hits from an Imperial (see below).
There were two 1974-76 Chevy wagons from Pittsburg, PA that won the feature. One of them was TRASHED by the end. These guys really knew how to drive and they had really great engines - that's what won it for them - their cars never cut off. Other people had cars physically left at the end, but they couldn't get them re-started after overheating. Cliff Holland had a sweet 1963 Imperial there, and it was tearing sh!t up! But one of his rear wheels broke off, and his engine started running like crap after someone hit him in the front fender (broke off his exhaust stack, and maybe other stuff). Only 1964-73 Imperials are illegal in this derby, so the 63 was legal. Man, that is the toughest legal car I have seen so far - after using the rear a LOT, it finally bent up, but he took some BIG hits to the front end, and the front bumper and frame never moved.
The promoter was a very good guy and paid out a ton of money. Total purse was $6000. He must have just broken even on the show. He said they are already scheduled to do it again in Raleigh next year on August 12th. So with that much notice, there should be better turn-out. He said if the turn-out improves next year, it will become a regular yearly event.
Later!
Richard
