Mooneyes New Years Show 2022
at Irwindale Speedway
Mooneyes New Years Car Show 2022
After a very long four year wait, Mooneyes is finally back at Irwindale Speedway for their Christmas show. This time being called the New Years show since it took place in January instead of December like years past.
A HOT Entrance
After an early 3:30am rise, we lined up to get our car into the show. The line was already over two miles long and snaked across three major streets by 4:30am. Once the gates opened and the hundreds of old school hot rods were allowed to start their entrance, temperatures quickly began to rise under the hoods of the 50+ year old Detroit steel machines. The slow paced idle fest of a line dodged many overheated and steamy radiators stuck on the side of the road as their outdated mechanical fans just couldn’t keep up with the heat of the engines. We daringly pushed our big block Chevy V8 well past 240 degrees F before finally getting out and pushing it the rest of the way through the gates.
Once in we were greeted by an array of hot rods and old school Americana. As the sun crested the speedway, we cracked open some cold ones and began our meandering stroll through the dozens of lines of cars. After stopping for some burritos and a new Pendleton jacket we ended up in the grandstands to watch the drag racing.
A HOT Entrance
After an early 3:30am rise, we lined up to get our car into the show. The line was already over two miles long and snaked across three major streets by 4:30am. Once the gates opened and the hundreds of old school hot rods were allowed to start their entrance, temperatures quickly began to rise under the hoods of the 50+ year old Detroit steel machines. The slow paced idle fest of a line dodged many overheated and steamy radiators stuck on the side of the road as their outdated mechanical fans just couldn’t keep up with the heat of the engines. We daringly pushed our big block Chevy V8 well past 240 degrees F before finally getting out and pushing it the rest of the way through the gates.
Once in we were greeted by an array of hot rods and old school Americana. As the sun crested the speedway, we cracked open some cold ones and began our meandering stroll through the dozens of lines of cars. After stopping for some burritos and a new Pendleton jacket we ended up in the grandstands to watch the drag racing.
The Devil's Number
The Mooneyes show always attracts top tier cars from around the nation and the old school gassers and hot rods that line up to go down the strip are no exception. Some of these cars never see action unless it's at a show like this, which is exactly why the upcoming set of events were so troubling for us. Not too long after we sat down to enjoy the racing, a beautiful 1963 Galaxy 500 lined up in the left lane aka “Burger Lane '' to make its run. About three quarters of the way down the track, the back end of the Galaxy came around smashing the front of the Ford into the left wall, shooting it across the track and coming to rest buried into the wall on the right. He crossed the traps at 6.66 seconds.. The Devil's Number. This set the tone for the rest of the races we had the guts to watch. Three more times this same thing happened to the car in the left lane. I deduce this was because of some crazy winds we saw the night before blowing dirt from the quarry behind onto the track. Fans in the stand yelled out to stop the racing until the track was cleaned, but cars continued to be sent. After watching a gorgeous 1965 Le Mans do the exact same thing yet again, we couldn’t bear to watch any more and proceeded to leave the stands.
Time Capsule Van
Amongst the sea of steel