Submitted by Rob Wolf
All Mopowered up and ready to roll . . .
So here’s the deal - you can sit in your Lazyboy and let the nightly news bring you down, or you can get out in the real world and hit the road with thousands of like-minded gear heads. Gas is cheap, perhaps the cheapest it will be for quite some time, so rip that cover off your old Mopar and get ‘er tuned up for the ultimate pentastar road trip - The Mopowered Tour.
For those of you who’ve been living under a rock, five years ago MCG and Totally Auto got together and crashed the Chevrolet-sponsored Hot Rod Magazine Power Tour . . . inviting all the pentastar proud to roll with us to many Mopar hot spots along the way. Over the years, the Mopowered Tour has taken on a life of its own.
This year, the Hot Rod Power Tour begins in Madison, Wisconsin, and then heads to Racine, on to Chicago, then South Bend, Indiana. Next comes the GM Tech Center in Warren, Michigan, Dayton, Ohio, and Somerset, Kentucky; it all wraps up at the Bristol Motor Speedway in Bristol, Tennessee. Unlike the Power Tour, the Mopowered Tour is not an official function. We charge no money and have no rules, other than your ride must be a Mopar to hang with us. Rent one, steal one, or take your neighbor’s, we don’t really care - as long as you’re brand loyal, you’re a part of the Mopowered Tour. While the Mopowered Tour costs nothing, we do follow the same route and stop at some of the same venues that the Hot Rod Power Tour does, so we suggest you sign up with the Power Tour folks so you have full access to the fun. New this year, we’ll be announcing morning leave locations each day, so any local Mopar motor heads that aren’t part of the official Hot Rod tour can cruise with us for a while too.
Last year, with the help of our friends at Mopar Performance, Raleigh Motorsports, Kicker Audio, and the like, Totally Auto created a purpose-built ‘67 Barracuda with all the new-age parts you could throw at an old muscle car; a tubular front end, a stroked 5.7 Hemi, bolstered seats, an electric moon roof, and enough sound to keep our ears ringing for days after we finished the trip. The plan was to use the little A-body for years to come as the Mopowered Tour lead vehicle, but as those of you who read MCG already know, the Barracuda was stolen several months ago. So, that lead us to Plan B, or perhaps I should say, Plan E-body.
Sitting in the corner of Dave’s garage was the very same bright Go-Mango orange ‘70 Challenger R/T SE that started this craziness five years ago. Now there are a dozen ways we could’ve approached the build of the 2009 Mopowered Tour Challenger, but why buck what we know to be tried and true? Over the years, we’ve learned what works on the road, and the Challenger will be updated with all the tricks we’ve learned. The first call we made was to our friends at Indy Cylinder Heads to get a 500" stroker wedge. Raleigh sent us their newest tubular front end setup with rack and pinion steering, and because Dave’s not one to take it easy, we opted for speed rated 17s and plan on mounting them on Magnum wheels to keep a relatively stock outward appearance. Inside, updated seats will cushion the ride, and on this one, an anti-theft system for sure!
I could go on and on about the cool add-ons to the Challenger, and I will in a future issue, but for now, the important thing is - it’s decision time. Is this the year you join us for America’s greatest road trip, or are you going to compress that Lazyboy cushion a little more?
For more information on the Mopowered Tour, check out moparcollectorsguide.com and click on the MoPowered Tour link at the bottom of the frist page and stay tuned to MCG for coverage of all the on-the-road mayhem.
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