Arlington, Texas – Day 1 of the 2013 Hot Rod Power Tour

I felt right at home as it rained; it made me feel like I was back in England at an American car show rather than here in Texas. The only difference was the rain was brief and warm compared with the UK rain, which is usually cold, and once it starts, persists. The variety of vehicles at the show today was incredible and was ever changing as some people arrived early, some arrived later, and there were cars constantly moving around the show areas.

I parked my 2010 ZR1 up in a shaded spot, having visited a local car wash on the way from the hotel this morning. The ZR1 survived the worst of the weather that Missouri could throw at me on Thursday afternoon, which had removed all the dead stuff accumulated from Illinois to Joplin, Missouri, my Thursday night stopping point. Friday’s drive from Joplin thru Oklahoma to Dallas had added another layer of suicidal entomology which the jetwash quickly dispatched. I would just like to take a moment to wish the people of Oklahoma all the best, as I was watching the Weather Channel and local Fox coverage of the unfolding disaster last night and it looked like scenes from a Hollywood movie.

We were soon joined by a silver C5 Z06 and a black ’09 C6 ZR1, owned by a couple from Corpus Christi, Texas. Later a couple more C6’s parked opposite – funny how Vette owners feel safer parked with other Vette owners! Hopefully we can organize to park more of the long haul Corvettes together as the week goes on. Tomorrow we have a drivers’ briefing from 7AM and the plan is to depart for Texarkana at 8:30 and arrive around midday.

I’ve added a selection of my pictures below and there is a bigger set up on my Facebook page – if you’re not already my friend, send me a request and assuming you only have one head and an eye either side of your nose I will probably accept you so you can see all the pictures…

Look out for my update tomorrow from Texarkana…

As I was leaving this yellow C6 turned up, and to the untrained it looks like any other C6 except this is actually a super-rare C6RS built by Pratt & Miller and cost new about double the price of a ZR1! This one is running with the Michigan plate C6RS001 so I am really hoping the owner is a long hauler so I can get to talk to him one day this week.

Bobby and Carolyn Buttram from Corpus Christi, Texas parked their black ’09 ZR1 next to my Jetstream Blue ’10 ZR1.

My first car was an MGB, though it had the proper chrome bumpers being a ’68, not like this later model American spec.

The engine in this car was pretty amazing and I suspect gave the car a little (okay a lot) more horsepower than the 1.8L four cylinder my one used to have. On the bright side I think I would probably not have made it past my 18th birthday if I had been able to squeeze this much horsepower under my hood.

I bumped into Mark Webster from the North Shore Corvette Club, one of my local clubs up in Illinois. He had decided to bring his beautiful Chevy Impala.

This looks like a very nice Morris Minor Traveler which is exactly the same car even to the color that I learned to drive in when I was 14 on the taxiways of the local airport in the UK.

The big difference with this is car is the airless wheels or “tweels” as Michelin calls them.

This was my favorite car of Day 1, a rat rod called Wednesday Night Special II. It was running a turbocharged LS1 motor and was just an amazing piece of engineering.

Day 2 after the jump…