Racers Hit the Streets Next Month
September will vibrate to the rumble and thunder of big-bore auto racing in three Southern California cities.
Epicenters of all the shaking and braking will be in Exposition Park near downtown Los Angeles, at the Tustin Marine Corps Air Station in Orange County and through the streets of San Bernardino.
L.A. Street Race: During Labor Day Weekend, Sept. 5-7, steel fences and concrete berms will convert stretches and corners encircling Memorial Coliseum and the Los Angeles County Natural History Museum into a 1.4-mile racetrack for stock cars, sports cars, open-wheel racers and high-performance trucks.
The Los Angeles Street Race--sponsored by Ford and operated by LA Events, which brings you the Los Angeles Marathon--is successor to last year’s thinly organized Los Angeles Grand Prix for vintage racing cars. This time, in an effort to attract larger crowds and fuller donations to the Inner-City Council for Abused and Neglected Children and the Urban League’s Automotive Training Program--the long weekend will be highlighted by the Kragen Z-One 200 for stock cars.
The event is part of the Featherlite Southwest Series, a lesser touring division of the famed NASCAR organization, and is expected to attract several Winston Cup drivers to a field of heavy-horsepower, fiberglass iterations of Ford Taurus, Chevy Monte Carlo, Chrysler LeBaron and Pontiac Grand Prix family cars--if the family happens to be named Earnhardt, Petty or Andretti.
Enlarging the bill will be the PRO Racing Series for modified Porsches; the American City Racing League, or ACRL, for inter-city team racing involving open-cockpit cars; and Ultra Wheel Spec Truck Series racing for identical fiberglass-bodied trucks with two-speed automatic transmissions and engines restricted to 360 horsepower.
Schedule: Saturday, Sept. 5, practice and racing sessions, Porsche PRO Racing, ACRL. Sunday, Sept. 6, practice, qualifying and racing, ACRL, Ultra Wheel Spec Trucks, Porsche PRO Racing, NASCAR Featherlites. Monday, Sept. 7, practice and racing for all series, plus Kragen Z-One 200, NASCAR Featherlite.
Prices: General admission and reserved grandstand seats range from $10 to $50 for adults, depending upon day and duration of the pass. Tickets for children are $5 to $25, with children under 3 admitted free. Sky boxes overlooking the start-finish near Memorial Coliseum are $500 a day and include catering.
Tickets: (800) 690-RACE.
Information: (310) 444-5544.
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Motor Trend Thunder: Chrysler Corp. presents “Motor Trend Thunder” at the Marine Corps Air Station in Tustin, Sept. 18-20, three days of vintage car racing over a 2.2-mile road course. Plus go-cart challenge racing, a stock-car shootout, a radio-controlled car championship and truck racing.
Prices: General admission, including unassigned grandstand seating, $20 a day, $45 for a three-day ticket, with children under 6 admitted free. There’s also free parking, fire pits, vendor stalls and RV dry camping, with some gate proceeds going to the City of Hope and Covenant House California.
Tickets and information: (949) 451-1959 or from Ticketmaster.
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Route 66 Rendezvous: As if the fabled highway that was my way wasn’t romance enough, this year’s “Route 66 Rendezvous” will also commemorate the 25th anniversary of “American Graffiti,” a classic movie of American youth, hot cars and the rites of cruising.
To trump that theme, planners of the Sept. 17-20 event have located the 1932 Ford Deuce hot rod that Paul Le Mat drove in the film and the white 1956 Thunderbird driven by Suzanne Somers. Both cars will appear, as will Le Mat, Candy Clark, Mackenzie Phillips and other stars of the movie.
An estimated 2,400 pre-1973 vehicles (plus American sports cars of any year) will invade San Bernardino for the event, and city planners have expanded cruising routes to more than two dozen downtown blocks.
This four-day street fair on wheels--at the California end of what little is clearly identifiable as Route 66--will feature concerts, inductions to the Cruisin’ Hall of Fame and an open-header contest with cars judged by their exhaust dins. Also a Burn-Out Championship at the Orange Show Speedway with victory to the young (or old) cruiser who can light up his (or her) tires and spin rear wheels the longest.
The rest of those automotive co-stars of “American Graffiti”?
“The 1955 Chevy driven by Harrison Ford was found in Baltimore,” spokeswoman Julie Rosoff says. “The 1958 Chevy Impala driven by Ron Howard is in Vallejo, and we’re still trying to locate the 1950 chopped Mercury driven by the Pharaohs.”
Rendezvous admission: Free.
Vehicle registration: $40.
Information: San Bernardino Convention and Visitors Bureau, (909) 889-3980.
