Some Aero Cars from the 1982 National Meet in St Louis 28 Years Ago...

[xs29j8Bullitt]

The upcoming Monster Mopar Weekend and other recent events in my life started me thinking about the first national meet that I attended, the 2nd Annual Chrysler Car Club Convention in St Louis, Missouri.  The following year the name of the annual gathering was changed to Mopar Nationals... which it remains to this date.

I drove a B5 Blue 1969 4 Speed Hemi GTX from San Antonio, Texas to the meet, accompanied by a friend in his FE5 Red 1970 Hemi `Cuda and three other friends riding along with us.  This long ago event was amazing for that time, nothing quite like it had been seen before.  The 1981 meet at Chelsea was a great event, but this meet had a much better draw from western and southern areas of the country.  Few few cars were trailered to the event, most were driven hundreds or even a thousand miles... on asphalt!  The only car that I can recall arriving in an enclosed trailer for the 1982 CCCC was Charles Chesier's immaculate Hemi Charger 500.  In addition, there were several dozen arriving on open trailers, but this only amounted to a small fraction of the cars in attendance.

At the meet I took over 400 photos, about half of which are now missing for various reasons.  For example at a recent Monster Mopar show, Bob Fink who was a former owner of the Mid America race track where part of the meet was held, requested all of the racing related pictures from the track.  I gave him the 50 or so racing related pics that I had with me at the time, and it seemed to make his day!

I have located most of the negatives from the 1982 CCCC, but 2-3 rolls worth remain unaccounted for...   I have been scanning in the prints that I have remaining, but plan to try to generate a whole new set of reprints if the negatives are still viable.  In this thread I will post some of the Aero cars that took pictures of at the event, but the quality will vary greatly... from moderate to downright dismal.  These images are from three sources, faded individual prints of the cars, cropped and enlarged parts from parking lot shots, and the worst are scanned in negatives (enclosed in opaque protectors) which have been converted for a peek at upcoming reprints...

First a couple of better ones from individual prints... a Hemi Daytona & a 440 Daytona...

[xs29j8Bullitt]

Here are some cropped and enlarged parking lot shots...

[xs29j8Bullitt]

And the awful scanned in from covered negatives and converted images... 

[nascarxx29]

  good stuff

[xs29j8Bullitt]

More pics...

[nascarxx29]

  Charles Chesire 500 whatever became of it he still own it .I had a poster of that car and wingcars they sold at some shows

[xs29j8Bullitt]

good stuff

Thanks Dave, here are a few more... I had a bunch of Wayne's silver Daytona, but gave most of them to him at MMW.

Notice what may have been the original attempt to copy the "G-Series" wind tunnel design...

[xs29j8Bullitt]

Charles Chesire 500 whatever became of it he still own it .I had a poster of that car and wingcars they sold at some shows

Yes, he still owns the Hemi Charger 500

Here are the last few pics for now...

[nascarxx29]

That 72 daytona looked similar to this one
http://www.dodgecharger.com/forum/index.php/topic,23783.0.html

[xs29j8Bullitt]

That 72 daytona looked similar to this one
http://www.dodgecharger.com/forum/index.php/topic,23783.0.html

That is definitely not the same car...

[nascarxx29]

I remember a few floating around before G series

[tan top]

  awesome  old pictures !!   love that red C500 with centrelines
thanks for sharing 

[Davtona]

Great pictures Allen. They sure bring back memories.