(Photos by Joe Grippo) – Growing up, some of my favorite days spent at the drag strip were the specialty days where one make was highlighted. Pontiac day, Ford day, etc. It always brought out cool cars for both the show and for the racing side of the event. This days are not over by a long shot and thanks to Joe Grippo we have a window into the Maple Grove Mega Mopar event and boy does it look like it was fun! Joe’s wife is a Mopar girl so there were there displaying her car. Joe brought his picture taking machine with him and sent us a great load of images from the show grounds and the drag strip.
The coolest part about this event is that it was a rescheduled rain out and it still drew a ton of cars. This is obviously a show lots of people look forward to and do not want to miss because normally when events are rescheduled and brought back, they are a mere shell of themselves. No here!
Thanks to Joe for blasting the photos. To check out his handiwork, simply click on the images below to expand them and then scroll on through with your arrow keys. If you like hemi engines this is the gallery for you!
That place will never change. Unless you’re a Chevy owner or one of their regulars they could care less about you. Especially if you show up with any kind of MOPAR.
I spent 10 hours there once on a test and tune day and got ONE pass on my Duster. Meanwhile I saw the same regulars making pass after pass. What the..?????
Then just after that(sometime in the early 90s) they cancelled the entire MOPAR show because there was 1 cloud in the sky around 6AM. It never rained a single drop all day but they still decided to hose EVERY person who per-paid for the event. They flat refused to let anyone in the gate. They assured us that they’d send us all refunds but I’ve been waiting over 20 years and still never saw a penny.
I still go to things like this and the Geezers show there but I will NEVER pay to run or show a car there ever again. I know LOTS of other people who feel exactly the same way about that place.
Can’t say I’ve heard many people voice that opinion, and I’ve been going there since it was named Maple Grove Drag-o-Way. Grew up close enough to ride my bike there every Saturday and Sunday.
Well that’s interesting because basically every person I’ve ever talked to about that place said the same thing I did to the letter….WAY Chevy biased, only cater to their regulars, 2 hour delays for NO reason, hardly get any passes, etc, etc, etc.
My cousin lives about 5 miles away from there so I made lots of visits there since the early 80s and almost always had the same result.
A shame because it’s a nice track, on the rare occasions where I actually got to run one of my cars there the times were good, and it’s probably the closest “big” track to my house but it’s just not worth all the hassle to go there.
MUCH easier to just go to Beaver Springs and not have to deal with any of that BS. If Bob ran Maple it’d be a lot better place but that’ll never happen.