(Words and Photos by Joe Grippo) Most people take their yearly vacations in the summertime, not us. My nice weather months (Spring, Summer, and Fall) are for racing and hitting up our many local events. We like to escape the harsh northeast winters to warmer locales, mainly to get in some car related activities in lieu of the snow removal activities which are currently happening at the Giant Grippo Racing Headquarters, here in Pennsylvania. This year we jump in a plane and jetted to the West Coast, sunny Southern California to be specific. We came out a week before the Grand National Roadster Show, by now you have seen extensive coverage from Chad, Wickam and Darr of that deal here on BangShift.

We hit up a bunch of cool events and places leading into the GNRS weekend, and I’ll kick off showing that stuff with our day at the Mooneyes New Year’s Party at Irwindale Raceway. A New Year’s Party the last week of January, you may ask? Yeah, just go with it. The Mooneyes Party is part Drag Race, part Car Show, part Rockabilly/Custom Culture Lifestyle gathering, but it is all fun! I love car events with variety, and that is what exactly we had Irwindale. Car show-wise there was everything, wildly painted Lowriders, traditional Hot Rods, Street Machines and Street Freaks, Customs from mild to wild, Vans and all sorts of Trucks, Volkswagens, and a few Motorcycles. Some were neater than others but even the driver quality iron was cool. Some highlights for me were seeing Coby Gewertz’s killer, if not controversial coupe, Saint Christopher, a few sweet tri five FORDS, and the pink lowrider ‘70’s El Camino. Too many to choose a favorite, in fact, I have no idea what the car count was, but it was huge, we spent a lot of our time over on the Drag Race side so we might have missed some of the car show unfortunately, it was that big!

Speaking of Drag Racing, it wasn’t a huge turnout, but give me quality over quantity anytime. Lots of Gasser style straight axle creations, some traditional pre-’72 bracket cars, a few rail jobs and altereds, and of course, Nostalgia Super Stock Muscle Cars. More VW’s and drag bikes rounded out the field. The classes were loosely organized, and the racing seemed like mostly fun runs, with buddies lining up for bragging rights all day. It was fantastic. Seeing Ernie the Attorney’s ’67 Fairlane with nasty big inch Windsor power was especially cool to me. There was a glorious sounding ’56 Chevy called “Love Affair, Too”, resplendent with no front bumper, fender well headers and Center Lines. It was making some beautiful music with huge dry hops and insane RPM shifts courtesy of a wicked hand mixer shifter. So badass and just the tickets for this east cast door fanatic. The racing went all day and my wife Stacey had to drag me away from the Burnout box to finish checking out the car show, and I was happy she did. A great day.

Plans are underway for the 2025 Mooneyes Party, start making your arrangements early. I highly recommend attending!

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