German Mopar Nationals

[TobiasM]

@anlauto : yes, Karl-Heinz` green 71 Cuda did show up at the event yesterday. It is up for sale for 79k EUR, which  is about 88k USD. He was one of the very few e-bodie-owner I couldn`t talk to, cause he left very quickly after my arrival due to rain.

@all others: here comes a summary followed by LOTS OF PHOTOS of our German Mopar Nationals, which were held this weekend in Herten, approximately 80mls northeast of Cologne.

Though there were several hundred Mopars, there were quite less than the years before because we were very unlucky with the weather. It was raining consistantly on SAT from about 03:00 until 15:00. As my RoadRunner isn`t waterproof, I nearly decided to leave it in the garage and to show up just as a visitor only.

But after checking realtime-weather-forecasts that promised end of rain from about 13:00 until the rest of the day, I decided to go to the show WITH my RR. Finally arrived at about 15:30. The event is held at a very nice venue: a former coal-mine, which was the main-industry in our part of Germany until the 1980`s.

Unfortunately, the weather-forecast did lie and it started raining again after not even 30min I had arrived and kept on raining then for 1.5 hrs! Several participants decided to finally head off home, when the rain set in on the afternoon again.

Regarding e-Bodies.org, I was reliefed that I received the buisiness-cards that I had designed/ordered here in Germany just in time. There were 12 E-bodies at the event and I took a chance to talk to 9 of the owners and hand them out a e-bodies-org-business-card. At the 10th and 11th car I attached a card and the 12th car (the green 71 Cuda Alan restored) was the only one I missed cause he left suddenly because of rain just after I had arrived.

Great news: 8 of those 9 owners did NOT know about e-bodies.org until I told them yesterday and all were curious after I told/explained them what makes this board outstanding. So hopefully there will be some new members in the next days from Germany/Europe.

2 E-Bodies were kind of special:

#1 was a Challenger Convertible owned by Ramon from Belgium, only CV at the show. Special here is that it is an export-car, built for European market with e.g. speedometer in "KPH" instead of "MPH" and clear driving-light-lenses in front (instead of organge). Ramon was the only owner who already knew about e-bodies.org and Cody already knows his car, as Ramon supplied the BCS of his special export-convertible to Cody, when he was building the BCS-decoder.

#2 was 1970 Challenger with FACTORY SUNROOF! Though I took pictures of the car during day, I was not aware of its sunroof because this is so super rare, I didn`t expect such a car to be there and so didn`t have a focus on that when taking pictures. A buddie hinded me to that this Challenger is a factory sunroof car in the night when we had fueltalk and 1,2 or 3 cold ones. I immediately took a photo then of the sunroof section, but it is at night, sorry for that.

Other interesting cars were:

#1 1969 Charger 500 (the one with the flush grille and flush rear-window)
#2 1969 RoadRunner because it was a 28k mls survivor car...even the redline-tires were the ones on the car since 1973!
#3 and #4 mid/late 70`s California CHP (440) respectively Califoria Sherrif`s (360) Dodge Polaras/Monacos. Don`t nail me on their years or if the were Polaras or Monacos.
#5 unfortunately didn`t made it to the show: 1968 real Hemi-RoadRunner, the car broke down on its way from Belgium with an issue on carburator.

As the years before, we were lucky to welcome people and cars from several countries e.g. Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark and I think England, too.

Stand-alone-mark of the German Mopar Nationals is, that there is not ownly "show" but also "go". The main-venue is the former cole-mine in Herten, where the cars are put on display, you pop-up your tent or caravan and have BBQ and drinks with all the people from FRI-SUN. On SAT about 18:00 we have a litte 10mls cruise to the small Airport of Marl-Sinsen were we luckily have the chance to drive 1:1 on the then for us closed Airport until about 21:00. The God of weather was kind to us, as rain had fully stopped when we headded off to the Airport...so we had much more fun with a dry strip and the sun shining.

For safety reasons, I decided to NOT run my Hemi-powered RR down the strip, due to my broken right hand. Driving in normal traffic is OK with my hand, everything works good enough there. But at the Airport A LOT of people are standing just besides the strip and that was too risky for me to eventually hit people in the case anything might go wrong with my car and not having 100% of "hand-control" at the moment to maintain as much control as possible of my car in an emergency-situation. But next year I will be there behind the wheel again...maybe even with "shaky SHAKER"!?!

Enough of words, will post a lot of photos now...if there are any questions, feel free to ask me.

P.S.: @Cuda Cody may I suggest to move this thread to the "Shows+Events" section?

[TobiasM]

And more photos of the GMN`s ...

The mainly B5-blue 70 Challenger with the T/A-hood is in 35years ownership here in Germany. The owner bought it from a Canadian soldier who was stationed in Germany and didn`t want to take that Challenger back home to Canada again, because it was in quite bad condition. The car sold to the German guy, who fixed it up and restored it in the early 1980s, which was quite a Challenge, as there was no internet and no parts available/reproduced as it is the case nowadays. The car also received that paint-style that was typical for the 1980`s and early 1990`s ("Cal-Look"?).

As the Mopar- or even "general"-US-car-scene was quite small in the 1980/1990`s, you had to travel lots of miles to join a meeting. Because of this, many cars residing in Germany at that time were equipped with long-axle-ratios, so you gained good cruisin-speed/low noise/less wear/lower fuel-consumption.

Also suspension upgrade were focused heavily on even in the 80/90`s, because on those far-distance-trips you don`t want to snail with 55mph. So the guys over here usually bring a lot of attention to their suspension/brakes and that everything is at least in good shape, with quality parts and properly adjusted/aligned.

For instance, that blue-Challenger used to have cruising-speeds of 150MPH, thanks to a 2.76 ratio and that German Autobahns beeing quite empty in the 80/90`s and not full of construction/roadwork-passages as nowadays.

[TobiasM]

Here is some pics of the SUNROOF Challenger, dark-burnt-orange, VIN should be "JH23G0B271454", the car is residing in the City of Hamburg (northern Germany).

And you see the "e-bodies.org"-business-card attached to it...so proven I kept my promise to spread the word about this great community! 

[TobiasM]

More pics, now we relocated to the Airport, sun is shining, a two-lane-blacktop...what else could one ask for???

[TobiasM]

I just realise that my smartphone-camera didn`t focus perfectly, so sorry for that! Gues my smartphone has "kissed the floor" too often...

But more photos to come, again, so sorry for them not being focused correctly!!!

[TobiasM]

And more driving-action...

The green "72-74" Cuda was VERY fast, only two faster cars from my impression on this event: one was a b7 blue 68-70 Dodge Dart (wild small-block and lots of traction) and the other was a 69 medium-green-metallic Dodge Coronet (Hemi with manual transmission and lots of traction).

The red 71 Charger Super Bee is owned by Arnd and Nicole, a lovely couple that really love their Super Bee. They own this car quite for a while (15years I guess), it is an original 1971 440 Charger R/T Super Bee, 727 trans, very good survivor-condition, engine rebuilt and modified by moparshop.de (the owner of moparshop.de is running the German Mopar Nationals). The 440-engine is dynoed to 450 DIN-PS...you can do the maths backwards knowing that the 426-Hemi`s advertised 425HP shrinked/shrunk to 350 SAE-NET-HP in 1971 and that the SAE-NET-HP-rating-procedure is quite comparable to DIN-PS-rating.

[anlauto]

Great pictures, too bad about the weather.....I think Charly is asking a fair price for my old Cuda.....There can't be too many 71 Cudas with that level of restoration over there.

[TobiasM]

@Alan: I won`t argue his price or the quality of work/magic you did on this Cuda, but in Europe the air gets pretty thin regarding potential buyers when it comes to Mopars in the higher price-ranges. Everything over 50k usually waits very long for the right buyer, of course even worse in the 75k or 100k range!

Reason is that buyers with that pedigree have plenty of cars to choose from: all years, all makes.

So most likely someone with +50k lying arround will first buy a Porsche 911 (old or newer ones), maybe an AMG (newer ones) a BMW M-Series (newer ones) or ALPINA (newer and older ones) or a Ferrari. If it is someone, who is specificly in classic-cars, than of course also might buy a Mercedes (Pagoda 280SL or W109 6.3) or a Jaguar XKE or a BMW (E9 3.0 CSi/CSL or E24-M635CSi or E28-M5).

If it is somebody, who`s heart beats for american muscle, they might buy a Corvette (C1-C3 or the newer ones) or a Mustang (64-69)...eventually a modern Mopar (Challenger/Charger SRT or Hellcat).

I can tell you first hand, cause I have got my RoadRunner with taht 426HEMI listed for sale for about 1 year now for 65k.

So I keep my fingers crossed, that Karl-Heinz soon finds the right buyer for his 71 Cuda and I am very happy Detlef ( @Culvers ) didn`t had to wait toooo long until he could sell his 1970 Challenger RT/SE 440-6 with that unique combination of plumcrazy-paint and yellow-bumble-bee-stripe.

[Chryco Psycho]

Thanks for the info & Pictures
I am glad the weather was decent for part of the time !!

[TobiasM]

@Chryco Psycho : thanks for complimenting!

@all: Here is the final stack of pics for you.

Worth mentioning is the B5-blue 67 Barracuda notchback. This car belongs to my buddy Michael. This car is pretty much in a very good survivor-condition and is a Formula S with 4 speed from the factory. Only change made was that the 273HP was swapped for a 340HP, which is a real delight.

As a little reward to myself (or compensation for not beeing able to drive due to my arm), I put myself on Michael`s passenger-seat and we had a fun-race with Wibke, a Mopar-Lady off the same regualars-table as Michael and myself. Wibke has a 71 Satellite Wagon (with a 383 I think), she did runs all day long on this day, her Wagon was really bulletproof and - though pretty stock - not tooo slow despite being such a heavy car.

Of course Michael "won" with his 67 Barracuda Formula S against Wibke, but it was a fun race and that`s what we had: ton`s of fun!

BTW: As Michaels 67 Barracuda is a 4spd, I am even more excited to drive my own manual-transmission Mopar...did I tell you about the VIPER-T56 that I have already on shelf for "shaky SHAKER"???

[J-Code Jeni]

Outstanding coverage of the event, Tobias! Really interesting to read about the suspension, gearing, etc improvements to run effectively & efficiently in the area. 

Thank you, again & again, for taking such initiative to promote this site! You went above & beyond, Buddy! 

[TobiasM]

You`re very welcome, Jeni!!! I am happy of being able to be a part of this great community!

[Cuda Cody]

WOW!!!! WOW!!!!
What a great event!  Sorry to hear the weather was not perfect the whole time, but looks like a really good turnout of some awesome cars!     And a HUGE thank you for helping promote the site.  You rock man!!!!      Love the photos of all the cars.  If I ever visit Germany I would love to time it around that show. 

[Chryco Psycho]

What a great time !
The 71 Wagons are cool & very few left now .
I had a 68 340S fastback with a 4 spd , it was a very quick car , always found it too small though so I sold it years ago , now I prefer the E bodies [what a surprize] & the 71 B body cars . My 71 Charger was not only geared 2.76 but I had the 833 OD in it , perfect for Germany , it would idle in OD @ 75 mph !!
Seems like you had a great weekend despite the rain on Sat
Thanks again for all you did to support the site as well

[RUNCHARGER]

Wow! What a great event. You have a much better turnout of cars and much better participation than here in N.A. in the west anyway.