August 10th, 2014 was most likely the largest gathering of the year of first generation restored and show Firebirds in one place at one time. We had 24 on Saturday and 37 on Sunday. And for the most part we were all together. WOW. Thanks to The Crusin Tigers for putting on such a great event. This was also the largest Indian Uprising ever, with over 540 total cars, and 140 Firebirds.
This was such a fantastic and successful show for our club. Thank you to Ron Rocchi and Mark Boratto for their donation of time and materials making our custom trophies – they turned out awesome! To Tim Dye, Curator of the Pontiac Oakland Auto Museum for judging our part of the show awards, he is a good friend to our club. Thank you to everyone that helped park cars (especially Sunday because it got so crazy early) and make all the Firebird owners we met feel welcome.
Seven new members joined our club over the weekend, and a few more said they would join, due to the warmth and hospitality of all the members. This puts our total membership to 47, and our club is still less than one year old. Several of our members won first place trophies, and 2 of the 5 Overall Best of Show awards went to our members (out of 540 cars)!!!
Congratulations to: Ian King – Midwest Firebirds Best of Show 1967 Firebird custom Trophy. Mark Evans – Midwest Firebirds Best of Show 1968 Firebird custom Trophy. Dave Armstrong – Midwest Firebirds Best of Show 1969 Firebird custom Trophy. Crusin Tigers Overall Best of Show Winners: Mike Gudenschwager – 1969 Turquoise Blue Ram Air III Firebird Coupe. Scott Schafer – 1970 Starlight Black GTO Judge Ram Air IV.
A few personal highlights for me were meeting Jim Wangers, Don Keefe, and Jim Mattison . Jim Wangers is known as the “Godfather of the GTO”, being the key advertising and marketing man for Pontiac and John Delorian on the GTO as well as all the Pontiac cars in the 60’s and 70’s – including the Firebird. Meeting our out of state members, Mark Evans (Michigan) and Craig Evans (Iowa) was wonderful. And we had so much fun when a few of us went out for Chicago-style pizza at Girodianos with Tim Dye on Saturday night.
Stay tuned, we’ll be posting more pictures of great Firebirds from this show in our next post. Our next large event is on Saturday, September 13th – an all-day cruise to Union Illinois, which Chet has arranged. Please join us if you can!
(Story by Ken Pitcher. pictures by Ken pitcher, Dave Sullivan and Paul Gundberg.)
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