Once upon a time, a gearhead had to make a tough choice when he got to a certain fork in the road with his hot rod: Do I build it for show and spend my weekends polishing paint, or do I go to the track and wring it out? Perhaps you're at a stage in your involvement with the hobby where that question no longer seems valid, and the losing side of that equation has long since been stashed away in the proverbial attic with other ancient regrets. The fundamental choice of "show" or "go" is one we face early on in our hot rodding life, but the Goodguys folks say, "Why not do both?"inline_mediumwraptextright26777623/events/0911phr_the_12th_goodguys_ppg_nationals0911phr_01+the_12th_goodguys_ppg_nationals+mustang.jpgTrue

Drag racing has long been a fragmented sport. Take, for example, Drag Radial, Foot Brake, Pro Stock, Outlaw 10.5, Super Pro, Nostalgia Super Stock, and Pro Extreme. They all have their diehard fans and they all run similar formats, but try explaining the differences to the everyday fan. Throw in that they all run at different places under different rules. Pretty confusing for the first timer, don't you think?

Goodguys Rod and Custom Association has been around for over 20 years. Their founder, Gary Meaders, started Goodguys in the small, Northern California town of Alamo. Their first car show was held at the Pleasanton Fairgrounds in March 1983, when there were 400 cars in attendance, a pretty incredible turnout for their debut. This show is still being held in the same place, now yielding more than 3,000 cars. Since that first event in Pleasanton, Goodguys has put on almost 500 events, from vintage drag racing, to laid-back all-year get-togethers, to the National events where some of the most prestigious awards are bestowed.

The Orange County fairgrounds in Costa Mesa, California, served as the playground for grown-up kids and their cars for the third annual Goodguys Get-Together. Only being the third year for Goodguys in Orange County, it's a baby compared to the veteran California events such as Del Mar, in its ninth year, and Pleasanton, going on 23 years. Though just starting out, this show has proven to draw quite a crowd. Southern California's mild sunny weather suits automotive hobbyists perfectly, and it's only natural for car guys and gals to migrate to its warmth. We weren't blessed with SoCal's usual smell of sun screen, but victim to frequent overcast and temperatures in the 50s--unseasonably cold to the natives. That didn't stop Goodguys' loyal crowd from attending though.

In the waning days of a glorious Midwestern summer, an American tradition sings its familiar encore. Like baseball, hotdogs, family vacations, and concerts in the park, hot rodding elicits a similar warmth from inside. Friday night cruising, car shows, stoplight encounters, and popping a cold one while changing oil on a languid summer day are all uniquely Yank experiences, but our Midwest siblings have it the best. There's no use arguing about it. Maybe it's those bone-chilling winters or the endless springtime rains, but Midwesterners make up for it with plenty to spare after Memorial Day-and they don't let off the gas until Mother Nature puts it all to bed by Thanksgiving.

With 20 years under its belt, fans of the National Muscle Car Association have had a lot of memorable moments. Records have fallen, controversies have raged, and legends have been made as the spectacle of street car racing has unfolded before them. Nothing in recent years, however, has produced the magic from years gone by as the GM Performance Parts LSX Shootout, which was held for the second time in conjunction with the NMCA World Finals in Memphis. It was a big show that was made even bigger, thanks to all the excitement generated by the LSX Shootout.

For many hot rodders, the pinnacle of the event season is the Goodguys PPG Nationals, held the second weekend in July at the Ohio state fairgrounds in Columbus, Ohio. It's a huge gathering, with thousands of cars sprawled across the hundred-acre venue. Veteran attendees know better than to go for just one day-this show needs all three days to get the maximum benefit.

Once upon a time, a sport called drag racing was invented, in which hooligans with hot street cars got organized and took the activity off the road and into a safer venue. Those heady early days were full of discovery and wonderment, as regular guys continuously broke boundaries and captivated audiences with their creativity and driving skill. But recent years have seen the waning of pro drag racing, as the cars have become less like street cars and more like spaceships on a mission to Mars. And while there will always be an audience for nitro-breathing fuelers, the meat-and-potatoes muscle car lover can't be blamed if he chooses to spend his racing dollar where he can see the same kind of cars that are in his garage.

"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.

The Goodguys Rod & Custom Association has long had a reputation-rightly or wrongly-as a magnet for the geriatric crowd. The common misconception is that AARP cards outnumber timecards by 10 to 1, and cabbage patch kids tied to chrome grilles are the only young people in sight. That scenario may have been the state of affairs a few years ago, but Goodguys has seen the light: The older crowd is slowly slipping away from the surly bonds of earth, and is being replaced by a younger, more active, muscle car breed of rodder.

The southern pine barrens of New Jersey are hardly what you envision when you think of that state. You won't find Tony Soprano popping a cap into anybody's skull near Atco-you'd swear you were somewhere in rural Pennsylvania if you were dumped off there blindfolded. As someone who's raced at Atco Raceway many times before, I can say that Atco is "da bomb." A combination of sea-level air, a tailwind, a downhill run, and being nestled amongst thousands of oxygen-producing pines, Atco Raceway is the stuff e.t. dreams are made of.

Every year, the musclecar parts giant, Year One, puts on an epic event near their Braselton, Georgia, headquarters, which is located about half an hour north of Atlanta on Interstate 85. We don't know if it's a coincidence, but that's also in the same neck of the woods as Road Atlanta-one of the country's premier road courses-and Atlanta Dragway, ditto as one of America's top dragstrips. Put these three giants together, and you have the ingredients for a very exciting event that encompasses every niche of the hobby you can imagine. As a point of reference, the Hot Rod Power Tour needs thousands of miles and venues in several states to create something resembling the same experience, only with the Year One Experience, you don't have to take two weeks off to enjoy it, and that's exactly what several thousand fans chose to do the weekend of May 16-18.

Green rolling hills, horse farms, soft spoken words, kind manners, and loads of hospitality would lull most folks into letting their guard down. But don't let the calm faade of a sleepy southern town like Bowling Green, Kentucky, fool you. Big mistake, especially if you're there to race at the NMCA's Seventh Annual NOS Nationals at Beech Bend Raceway. Hot cars, fast times, and big-money racing are a large part of the fabric of this small town, which is about an hour's drive north of Nashville, Tennessee.

It's the automotive equivalent to the circus coming to town. Every January, sellers, buyers, and window shoppers descend upon Scottsdale, Arizona, for the Barrett-Jackson collector car auction. Why? It's the biggest event of its type around. This year, 1,163 vehicles went before the gavel and over 280,000 visitors were there to see it happen. It's a car show with a catch: You can have any car for your very own, provided you have a bidder's card, and enough cash.

Building the winning Engine Masters Challenge motor means successfully applying theoretical knowledge. This sounds reasonable, but there are stumbling blocks-two, in fact. First, the theory has to be right, and secondly, it has to be functionally applied. Assuming the smarts for the first part, the second does not seem too difficult until a specific component is found not to function quite as well as hoped. At this point, things can get complex real fast. It's here that the difference between a totally theoretical engineer and a practical engineer really shines. If you've followed the EMC through the years, it's clear that whoever wins has to be well versed in both theory and practice. What we're going to do is start with applied theory and see how far it will take us before we run into a problem that might derail a winning combination and force us to make a hardware compromise to get better results.

If drag racing is like wine and cheese, then bracket racing is beer and pretzels. It's racing for your average Joe who doesn't have the long green for a full race team or the patience for the rules that the big racers have to deal with. It's a run-what-ya-brung deal, where you show up with a car and make your best guess at e.t. Cut a good light, beat the other guy to the end of the track, and you win. Just don't go faster than your dial-in.

Heads-up street car racing has seen many twists and turns over the last decade and a half. Organizations have come and gone, street cars have morphed into purpose-built machines for specific classes, and costs have grown nearly as quickly as the performances themselves.

No one knew just how this would play out. The Engine Masters Challenge was now into its sixth year, and it seemed like we've never had so many unknown variables. Gone was the simple formula of setting down an engine size for our builders to build to. Cubic inches were open to any factory combination over a 300-cid minimum. But we knew what we wanted-factory muscle duking it out against factory muscle, just as it was back in the day. I can remember lining up my 440-equipped Charger against 350 Camaros or 396 Chevelles. It's universal to anyone who has been immersed in the performance culture, and it always came down to what's under the hood. Sometimes even back then, there were surprises when engine-building skill put an edge on an underdog, and sometimes that skill was enough to bag the glory from established rivals.

The 2007 Jeg's Engine Masters Challenge was the forum for the recent shootout of factory-based musclecar engines, where the country's top builders duked it out for $192,000 in contingency prize money. With that kind of cash on the line, guys were going to put their best foot forward and employ every legal trick in the book.

Ask that punk Darwin for a refund. Come early October in Texas, it's still hot as hell. As an incessant stream of sweat dribbles down your forehead, your eyebrows struggle to keep the stingy fluid off of your eyeballs. Shouldn't our species have adapted to this sort of thing by now? Not a problem for us, though. You don't need any more compelling reason to voluntarily subject yourself to that sort of suffering than the Super Chevy Show. Despite what might seem like bad seasonal timing, hoards of Texans flocked to San Antonio Raceway to witness some of the baddest street/strip Chevys in the state throw down.

January generally means that most of the country is buried in snow, but out in Southern California, it just means that it's time for that annual pilgrimage of shiny cars to the Grand National Roadster Show (GNRS). This year it was once again held at the Pomona Fairgrounds, and since it's held indoors, even some unseasonable rain didn't slow things down. About 600 cars were on display in and around the buildings of the fairgrounds and PHR was there with our cameras to capture some of the glittering rides.

Going to MATS requires cruising over to The Cannery for some evening entertainment, and it also means chilling with old friends (and some new ones) at the Golden Skillet Restaurant just across from the track. As we ransacked the buffet, we kept getting stares. (Did I have a string of cheese on my chin?) We'd been found out for the mag guys we were, and settled into some great conversation. We'd seen Jim LaRoy's Duster on the trailer in the parking lot, and he was now in our face with the December 1982 issue of PHR. His dad, Bill "Pop" LaRoy, had built a 630hp 440 Wedge for us back then, and Jim wanted to do some catching up. We found out that "Pop" has left us, but Jim is still wrenching, and he's the spitting image of his dad.

Indianapolis, Indiana, is best known for the Brickyard and its famous races like the Indy 500 and, for a short time, the recent Formula One race, but there's another track in the area that deserves attention. That place is O'Reilly Raceway Park (ORP), and gearheads have been drag racing there for nearly 50 years. It does not get the press that the Brickyard enjoys, and it'll never host a quarter million fans, but it has something the other track lost a long time ago: grassroots real-deal racing. While the Brickyard is for spectators, ORP is for drivers who live for the smell of burning race gas and melted rubber.

People love to quote chapter and verse about how fast their street cars are. You know 'em-and you may even be one of them. These Internet jockeys whip out handy dyno numbers and e.t.'s at the slightest provocation, clogging up message boards with enough virtual hot air to launch a Saturn V rocket. This story isn't about those people, it's about a class of racer-the street fighter-who practices what he preaches. He does it on the street, at the track, and with just one machine. This is NMCATrue Street.

Very few events offer the range of activity that the Year One Experience offers. Probably the thing that comes closest to The Experience is the Hot Rod Power Tour, but it still lacks the drag racing and road racing elements. Truly, the Year One Experience, held every spring at venues surrounding Year One's Braselton, Georgia, facility, is a one-of-a-kind deal.