First of all, I wonder if this even happens. Have you ever personally witnessed the moment when a car that has only ever idled from show booth to trailer finally got unleashed and driven in earnest? Does it lead to immediate disaster? Is it a glorious symphony of roaring engine and melting tires?
Might not be what your after, but the cars I’ll point you to run well … Until they don’t.
We have an annual car show over here, have a search for “Summernats” for videos. They have a burn out pad where you can melt some tyres.
Some people restore cars and take them there for show. Some have excellent paint jobs , but a typical Summernats one has more horsepower than the original. This usually leads to a few redlining on the pad and exceeding a limit so that they catch fire or can’t be driven home.
Or at least, so I’ve heard…
Never heard of Summernats before, googled, I’ve definitely seen footage from there, that shit is nuts.
Ah, Summernats. I used to work at a servo in Canberra. That time of year was nuts.
Usually I was the only staff on site, but we’d have four staff on for nats. One would basically be handling the car wash exclusively. Two would be constantly restocking food and drinks. We’d get a shipping container of extra stock dropped off to keep up.
The bus home would have to go through a cloud of tyre smoke, and half the passengers would get off at the north side brothels and strip joints.
I never actually went to the festival itself, but I feel like I got most of the experience.
That sounds amazing! At least, until they catch fire. A symphony of roaring engines followed by immediate disaster, haha how cool!
Some owners were tamer. Burnouts weren’t required. They sometimes had a parade through the city, blocking off streets and cops as part of it. I did notice at the end of it was a truck with a tilt tray so a break down of a car just doing 40-50kmph along a city road was planned for.
At first, I didn’t understand the term trailer queen, and thought it had something to do with trailer parks.
Check out Hagerty media and the videos of Jason Camisa driving some legendary cars - always ends with him flogging the crap out of them on a twisty road and/or track.
I’ve seen those, I’m amazed that they let anyone drive such nice examples of those cars at all, let alone turning them loose on a track etc
They know Hagertys good for it at least
A modern car is likely better if you want power. a 1962 corvette came with 250-360 horsepower. A 2024 honda accord comes with 190, not far behind for a basic ecconomy car. The modern car will have much better handeling because we have better suspention.
which is to say it does happen (see other replies), but most don’t because they are not that great. Besides if you race it something might break and you have to fix it.
Power or not, I’m asking for stories about extremely pretty cars getting properly driven after years of idling on and off of trailers
With the 1972 change in how horsepower is measured (gross versus net), the modern car is even closer to the muscle car’s horsepower.
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Very interesting! This is the kind of thing I’m looking for. Any specific stories? I’m most curious about the ones who embraced the opportunity
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