The Mopar Nats
Words and Photos by Cliff Gromer
11/9/04
It's the Mecca of the Mopar hobby--the Mopar Nats. Don't
confuse it with those pesky Mopar gnats (hot street small-blocks
that the Ford and Chevy crowd constantly try and swat). Every
year like clockwork, the Mopar Nationals comes up smack in
the middle of August, right between our two other favorite
events--The Most Annoying Horn Nationals and The Stupidest-Looking
Exhaust Nationals.
With over 3,000 Mopars jamming the show fields, along with
1900 vendors and almost 60,000 fans streaming into National
Trail Raceway near Columbus, Ohio over the three-day extravaganza,
this Mopar event rates as one of the biggest car shows on
the calendar. Where else can you show up with an armful Mopar
tattoos, your head shaved into the shape of a pentastar or
with a tackleboxful of Mopar-related face-piercings and not
be ridiculed by your peers? Where else can you show up with
a clapped out Valiant and get a thumbs-up from the die-hard
Mopar faithful? Where else can you show up with a ricer and
barely escape with your life? Nowhere, that's where.
 No Johnny-come-lately to the car show circuit, the Nats
has been drawing the pentastar troops for 24 years. Jim Bielenda,
the "Bill France" of the Nats, started this deal
as a small car show (they say in his garage). Like his NASCAR
counterpart, Bielenda has grown this annual happening into
the giga-dollar enterprise, complete with TV coverage and
a cavalcade of heads of state, that it is today. And the
Nats is Bielenda's side job. By day, he works full-time for
(who else?) DaimlerChrysler.
In spite of elevating Road Runners, Chargers and 'Cudas
to the level of idol worship, you can't separate the pure
devotion to the Chrysler marquees from money. Deep-pocket
collectors have driven up prices on desirable models--especially
Hemi Cudas--to the moon. While musclecars in general are
on a bubble, Mopars lead the pack because today's hottest
models were produced in such limited numbers. One any day,
you probably can find 100 1967 427 435-horse Corvettes for
sale. But Chrysler (pronounced Chryzler in Canada), only
nine 1971 Hemi Cuda convertibles. One of these recently sold
for an astounding $2 million, making it the world's most
valuable musclecar. Is the car worth that? We don't think
so, but the buyer wanted one badly enough, and two mil is
what it took to pry it from the owner. To his credit, the
buyer, Bill Weimann, plans to drive and enjoy his new toy,
rather than sock it away until the market maybe makes it
a $3 mil car.
The deal with the Nats is its variety, as well as its size
(according to Bielenda, size matters, and, we think that
if he could swing it, the Nats would probably expand to cover
six miles of Route 40 which would then be closed to traffic.)
If you like drag racing (and we imagine you do, otherwise
you'd be logged onto something like the "Giant Thighs" website
instead of DragRacingOnline), you could spend three days
in the stands until the tire smoke came out of your ears.
Maybe you're the show car type. You could spend three full
days just wandering around the show fields checking out the
restos and modifieds on display. Maybe you have a fetish
for fondling greasy parts. Three days in the swap meet would
be enough to satisfy any fondling junkie. Or, you could spend
three days just eating at the concession stands and spend
the next three days in your motel room recuperating. Yup,
something for everybody. We, for one, because of our short
attention span (goes with our short stature), like a little
bit of everything.
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