This is going to be a great weekend with warm, clear sunny skies (finally!) and the Good Guys Spring Nationals Car Show at Westworld in Scottsdale.

I enjoy the Good Guys show events immensely.  These weekend happenings are really a big party in honor of those of us who love the automobile hobby.  There’ll be street rods, classic cars, antiques, muscle cars as well as a mind-boggling assortment of vendors and a swap meet for those enthusiasts looking for their dream car project.

Only cars built from 1972 and earlier are allowed into the show, and with the nearly 4,000 cars anticipated to be on-site there’ll be a multiple of sights, sounds, and smells to take in.  The artistic lines of the different models are masterfully crafted while the mingling of the leather,exhausts and oil smells are ever present with various motor pitches.

To the prom in a ’58 Chevy

The car hobby is rooted deeply in the Capparelle family.  Dad has a model of the 1958 powder blue Chevy Impala that he and my mother drove in to their Greenwich High School senior prom in 1965.  He claims it’s his best memory of that car that he bought for only $350.  Today, a fully restored version could run you as much as $75,000.

When my parents were first married, mom was not a licensed driver.  Dad was stationed with the Air Force in Tacoma, Washington.  If my mother wanted to get out and about, she needed to learn how to drive.  So to coax her into the excitement of driving, dad purchased a brand new 1969 Dodge Charger.  From that car on, mom was hooked on cars.

As a kid, mom wanted to make sure my father and I would have some common ground.  Since I wasn’t into organized sports, the little league scenario wasn’t going to fly.  She suggested that dad take me to a car dealership and let me check out the cool cars. 

I remember us going into a Pontiac dealership in 1977. Wow! I can still distinctly recall the gleam shooting off of that black Trans Am on the showroom floor.  Dad let me sit in for what seemed like hours.  (If you ask him, it probably was hours.)

Red Hot ’69 Dodge Charger Daytona

In 2007 our family acquired another ’69 Dodge Charger only this time it was for the purpose of restoring it to its original condition.   (Specifically, it was a 1969 Dodge Charger Daytona.)  It was a major project that took the better part of a year and a half before we sold the car at the Russo and Steel auto auction.

If you’re a car lover like me, I know you can understand it when I say this was an once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to be part of such a massive and challenging undertaking.  Thanks again, mom and dad, for that experience.  I will never forget it.

If you come to the show, stop by and say hi to me.  I’ll be there with my 1968 black Chevy Camaro convertible.  We can talk cars. 

And, bring your children.  You never know…it might change their life like it did mine.

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