Summer continues to roll on, and so do all things related to muscle cars in the summer!

The car-show summer continues!  I’m sure that there are weekly car shows in your town, but the next big one in the Midwest is the Car Craft Nationals in Minneapolis.

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In addition to all of the other cool things going on at the car show (vendors, autocross, etc.), there’s a really neat event called the Car Craft Launch Box Challenge.  It’s a hard even to describe – but essentially a three sided ‘box’ is set up with cones and your job is to launch your car from a pre-defined distance (and dead stop) toward the box with the intent of getting there as fast as possible – and then stopping completely within the box without knocking over any cones.   Here is a handy video that may describe it a little better!

This week the gang from Mecum Auctions comes to Iowa, which is nice….as I’m in Iowa!  Specifically, they’ll be in the Varied Industries Building on the Iowa State Fairgrounds in Des Moines Friday July 17 through Saturday July 18.  Mecum has been around for quite a while and travels the country with their classic car auction.  I’ve never been to one before, so I thought I’d head over to see what it’s like.

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Something that is kind of neat about their auctions is that a portion of it is shown live on HD Theatre – and since it’s in high definition the picture is absolutely stunning!  If you are in the mood to buy/sell auction style, this show might be to your liking.  I’m more interested to participate as a spectator because I’d just like to see the cars.  If you’d like to to do the same, head on over!  General admission is $10 (kids 12 and under are free).

Don’t forget – if you’re interested in tracking the prices that muscle cars have been going for (as many people that follow auctions are), by signing our for our weekly newsletter on the right hand side of this page you’ll receive a free months subscription to Keith Martin’s Collector Car Price Tracker!

GM is now officially exited from bankruptcy (accorinding to Reuters)….and some crazy things may be going on there.  It appears that GM may actually still be in the performance car (even muscle car) business – even after having had to close it’s special high performance division as part of the deal in taking government funding and a new leadership team put into place.  The assumption is that the engineers and resources previously building performance cars would be tasked with working on newer greener style machines…….but for those of us that love the sound of a V8 in the morning, there’s still a glimmer of hope.  The super-hot Pontiac G8 (which was scheduled to be axed along with Pontiac) may live on as a rebadged Chevy…..Caprice!  Bob Lutz has been brought back in to GM…..and all of a sudden interesting things are happening again with modern muscle cars….that much is for sure!

I most certainly hope that this comes to fruition.  The G8 is a terrific car – and is even enough of a muscle car that we allow it to be advertised here as a muscle car at The MuscleCar Place.  I’m also thrilled to see Chevrolet to produce a rear-drive family car again…especially one that’s stuffed with a high horsepower V8.  Who knows – perhaps in 20 years we’ll be talking about the Classic 2010 Chevy Caprice as our favorite muscle car!

-Robert Kibbe

The MuscleCar Place – Great Muscle Cars for Sale

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