I would imagine, that back when transportation fantasies consisted of a healthy horse, and fertile hunting grounds…guys still stood around and said…”If you had 2 gold pieces and you had to spend it on horses, what would you get?”
Because, I’ve played that game since I was a kid, and I can’t imagine variations of the discussion ever not existing.  Its kinda like space….its always been there in some form…and it will continue long after we are all dead and gone.  So this morning, Chris and I had the conversation…and I just happen to have the transcript….

me:  So, if you had 300g’s and you had to spend it all on cars. what would your first purchase be?
Christopher:  it was given to me today?
me:  yep. you get a check at lunch.
Christopher:  FIRST
I’d go straight to the auto gallery and pay cash for that GT3RS
without thinking.  it’d be a reflex
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There were actually three Pacers on the Power Tour in 2009. Ours, a somewhat beat-up 77 station wagon, and a built 76 coupe with a Mopar 440 under the hood.  We had actually met the 440 guys two years ago when we did our first Power Tour, and this year they came back with a fully rebuilt car.  From day one we knew that there was going to have to be a Pacer on Pacer showdown, and on the final day at Bristol Dragway in Bristol, TN it went down.

My dad had run a few passes in the Pacer before hand and after red lighting the first pass and spinning the tires half way down the track on the second, we knew we were in for a challenge.

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Today started out where no Power Tour participant wants to be…the shop.  As I had mentioned yesterday, when we arrived in Racine we noticed that the alignment on the Pacer was WAY off.  Could have been the hammering at the drag strip but somehow a few of the adjustment cams in the front suspension slipped and the front tires looked like they were ready to fold over.  We woke up early and busted out the Yellow Pages and made a call to the guys at Alignment By Klamm in Racine, WI.

The guy mentioned on the phone that they were super busy, but we called at a quarter to 8 and he said that if we got there ASAP, he could squeak us in. Our 3 month-old Kumho’s were ecstatic! When we arrived, they wasted no time and threw the Pacer on a lift and went to town with lasers and computers and as true professionals knew EXACTLY what they were doing. They also even gave us tips on how to keep the suspension from slipping again, which is the first shop to do that. I implore you if you’re in the Racine, WI area or find yourself in Racine, WI and need alignment work done, go to Klamm’s. They had us on the road by nine, too late for the driver’s meeting out of Racine, but still far earlier than we expected.

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Every year during the first couple weeks of June, Hot Rod magazine organizes a 2,500 or so mile rolling car show through the Midwest.  Hot rods, muscle cars, street rods, motorcycles, tricycles (man, I hope this one comes out!), Pacers (two years ago, there were three on the tour!), you name it show up for a week of celebrating what makes these cars great:  driving the doors off them on the Hot Rod Power Tour.  I was able to accompany my dad in the Pacer two years ago, but due to life changes, I missed it last year when he got incurably hooked on the tour.  This year though, I’m a little more planted and finally able to get the time off.

The best part about the tour is that it’s not just a week of a bunch of car shows, it’s about people that love their machines…fanatical if you will.  I’m going to be sure to have my laptop and camera in toe, so wherever my little MacBook can grab WiFi, I’ll update our twitter with happenings and every night I’ll post a Fanatics top ten to the site when I get back to rest at the hotel.  Not to mention, we’ll get some formal ¼ mile times out of the Pacer and depending on how she’s feeling after that, I might try for some autocross action.  It’s going to be a blast and I’m going to bring you all along for the ride.

Check back this Saturday as I set out on the 2009 Power Tour and watch our twitter for updates.

I was probably 2 maybe 3 days old before I started dreaming about my first project car.  At the time, my dad was working on putting together a 1969 Mustang Mach 1 and as far back as I can remember, that was the car that got me hooked on muscle cars.  As I got older, my dad and I threw around more and more ideas for what we could put together as my first project car. Camaros, Mustangs, Challengers, but they were all too expensive for a beginning driver and didn’t quite have the flair that we were looking for.

It was then one fateful day when I watched Wayne’s World for the umpteenth time and put two-and-two together.  Why not a Pacer?  Dad laughed, but I was serious.  He wrote it off as crazy, but I kept my eye open.  A month or so later, paging through a car trader with my buddy (yea, that’s how car obsessed I have always been) we stumbled across a 1978 Pacer that the ad claimed to be equipped with a V8!  I clipped out the ad and rushed home to my dad.  Showing it to him, we both wrote it off as a typo until he called.  AMC DID in fact put a V8 in a Pacer, and this was one of them.  We had found our project car.

I was 13 years old when we took delivery of our Pacer, and within a month it was completely torn down and body on a rotisserie.  Three excruciating years and a lot of blood, sweat and tears passed until we had it fully restored and ready for the street, and when it finally was, it was a HOOT!

Those three paragraphs must be the longest introduction to a post ever, but I had to give some perspective to the Black Pacer in the above image and accompanying photo gallery.  Read the rest of this entry »