The Mopar Las Vegas Meet - Mopars At The Strip

"I've got another one in the car if you want it," says John Clark, Chrysler's head of the Mopar Performance Division. Just when I thought March 28, 2008, couldn't get any better, Clark offers me contraband-a Cuban Monte Cristo torpedo. These haven't been legal to bring into the U.S. since the Kennedy administration. I fire up 5 inches of heaven and become infused with all that's good in the world. My Las Vegas experience-Mopars At The Strip-has now exceeded all my expectations and then some, and it's only Friday, with two more days left of the event.

I nurse the wonderful stogie, admiring the cars in front of the Mopar Performance trailer. Car builder Matt Delaney has once again assembled another work of art-a '70 Challenger with Viper running gear-over which I am now drooling. The audio track to this total immersion in Mopar fantasy is just as impressive. The wail of yet another max-effort Hemi sings like Robert Plant as it hits a high note in the burnout box. Time trials for the Hemi Super Stock Challenge are under way, and the smell of high octane and tire smoke intertwines with the delicate Cuban smoke.

Oh so much to do, and so little time to do it in. I thank Clark for the cigar and jump back in my golf cart. My friends Kenny, Robert, and Kristen jump in, and we make a beeline for the swap meet. We're on a mission to find some Valiant badges and a better set of Duster taillights. The search would turn out fruitless, but I doubt we could've had more fun if we found exactly what we were looking for. Life's about the journey, not the destination. We run into Jeff Hild, a 21-year-old engineering student at Cal Poly Pomona. He's there with his dad, Tom, who helped him resuscitate a Sassygrass Green '71 Duster 340. It runs bottom 12s, and we strike up a conversation. I dig the Duster's buck's-down vibe and crazy street performance. Kenny likes it because it's a Duster like his. We're off before they even realize we're from the magazine.

The car corral was overpriced, as per usual at any all-Mopar event. That's not to say it's without humor. We saw what must've been the '66 Coronet in that famous Foster Farms chicken commercial, because it looked like it came right out of the barnyard. The hood was up, the intake manifold was gone, and my impression was that chickens had roosted there. The asking price was through the roof. We weren't biting. In all seriousness, c'mon guys, what's with the price gouging on Mopars?

Next stop, the car show, and a familiar face. Last year, I snapped a shot of 20-year-old Katie McDonald, a business major at UNLV. We had posed the stunning blonde next to her dad's '04 Dodge Cummins diesel, and ran it in last year's coverage as a full page back in December. She hadn't seen the spread, but Robert had a copy with him. You'd have thought she won the lottery, jumping up and down, squealing like, well, a school girl. A big round of hugs for everybody.

The Mopar hobby is diverse. Its purveyors range from poor to rich, from diminutive A-body to hefty C-body, and from American to everybody else. Everybody else, in this case, turned out to be a member of the Arab royal family. He's so important, he doesn't have a name that can be uttered to mere mortals, and he doesn't even have to be at MATS, so he sends the official royal family muscle car builder. The royal Saudi's steed is a '73 Challenger, swilling high-octane brew at a state-subsidized 11 cents a gallon. The satin black g-Machine terror packs a Hemi, and will no doubt see some late-night street racing in the Saudi capital, and possibly even at Dubai's new state-of-the-art dragstrip. We'd show you a picture, but we'd probably be visited in the middle of the night by ninjas. The scene is creepy. We putter off in our insignificant little golf cart.

Trundling through the car show, conversation turns to mid-'70s Mopars. If there's a final frontier in the Chrysler hobby, this is it, and we're game. Kenny starts gushing about his '72 Charger. "I wanted a '73 SE, but the front suspensions are totally different, and nobody makes stuff for them," says Kenny. Then we spot Nick Villiger's black '73 Charger. Kenny's on it like white on rice before the cart even comes to a stop. Villiger, a retired 65-year-old production manager from Mountain Home, Arkansas, explains that the triple-black B-body is possibly the only non-SE '73 Charger ever built with bucket seats, a 400 big-block, and a slap-stick shifter. It's obvious that Kenny and Nick will be engrossed for a while, so I mosey over to an attractive woman by a '67 GTX, one of my all-time favorites. I say, "You're really cute. Can I take your picture?" Big mistake. Those eyes burned in me like lasers, and her face turned red. "I'm a happily married woman," she says in the most old-money voice she can muster. "You just can't come up and say something like that!" Well, actually I can.

I hightail it out of there. Robert and Kenny are grinning and shaking their heads. For the next hour, they harass me about the incident in the way that only good friends can. Later that night around the pool at the Golden Nugget, we light off the last three Cuban Cohibas my brother gave me. We watch the sharks circle lazily in the glass tank as our smoke mingles with the cool desert air. We laugh one more time about the uppity blonde and my lack of social skills. Life is good, and it's only Friday.

The Supercharger Store: Twin ProChargers & Direct Drive
We just couldn't leave out this dual gear-driven ProCharger F2 setup. When we saw it at The Supercharger Store's display, we had to bombard employee Bob Woods about the details. This one happens to fit Mopar B, RB, and LA blocks, but The Supercharger Store makes them for big-block Chevy, small-block Chevy, big-block Ford, small-block Ford, Buick, and Olds applications, too. The unit bolts directly to the block, and the gear case bolts to the crankshaft, thus eliminating all belts, and improves hood clearance. The dual-blower unit seen here typically costs $12,600, and includes the geardrive, two F2 blowers, and the race relief valves. A single blower geardrive runs about $4,200. For more info, call The Supercharger Store at 520-456-9706, or log onto www.thesuperchargerstore.com.

Gear Vendors Overdrive For Highway Haulin'!
If you've got a 727 TorqueFlite and you hate $4-a-gallon gas, meet your new friend, Mike McCarthy of Gear Vendors. Mike showed us the new Gear Vendors overdrive unit (PN 3DFS0727, $2,495), which fits all 18.5-, 15-, and 8-inch TorqueFlite tailhousings. It's got a .78 overdrive ratio (just multiply your highway cruise rpm by .78 to get your cruise rpm with the overdrive on). Mike told us that with a 3.54 rear gear ratio, the overdrive unit makes it behave like a 2.77 gearset. To get more info, you can e-mail Mike at gvmikemccarthy@yahoo.com, or log onto www.gearvendors.com. Or just use the phone and call him at 619-562-0060.

A Little Dash Of Class
Most of the A-body dashes we've seen are slap worn out and could use a little TLC from this man right here, Frank Veloz of Just Dashes. Frank can restore your '68-72 A-body dash (Barracuda, Dart, Duster, Valiant) for around $599 if it's black, or $1,000 for any other color. Dashpad cores are available upon request, and can even be rehabbed with a built-in gauge pod like you see here. Check it out in detail by calling 800-247-3274, or logging onto www.justdashes.com. They're also available for most Mopar B-bodies, too.