Carlisle GM Nationals 2005

Carlisle GM Nationals 2006

I made my annual pilgrimage to Carlisle PA for the GM Nationals show that is held on their 87 acre facility. Every year this show proves to be a lot of fun, and always full of a few surprises. This year the torrential downpours wreaked havoc on vendors and show cars, but fortunately, it held off during the day on Friday and again on Saturday. On Friday we spent our time in the swap meet area. Unfortunately, there were a lot less vendors there this year, and there wasn't as much thirdgen content as in previous years. Still, there were some very interesting sights at the swap meet, most notably, this pair of 63 split-window corvettes for sale:

Swap Meet

63 split-window Corvette coupes for sale This pair was a sight to see. The one on the right was priced at a hair under $20,000. The body has been heavily modified, mostly with bondo. On the front end it's easy to see where the bondo is well over .5" thick! The interior had shag carpet and velvet seats, all of it in terrible condition. The car on the left appeared to be all stock, and in good condition, though every single piece would need major restoration work. He was asking over $45k for that one!

One of the nicest cars at the event was actually at the Keisler Transmission vendor booth, and not in the show itself. This early 2nd gen Camaro was exceptionally clean, and just a super nice car:

Silver Second Gen Camaro

Car Corral

On Friday we also visited the Car Corral. This year, there were very few thirdgens for sale. The same ugly teal RS that was for sale for $9500 last year was still for sale this year, at a more reasonable, but still way overpriced $4500. For pics, check out the 2005 Carlisle page.

1989 IROC This hardtop car had the somewhat rare 15" wheels. It had around 50k miles, and his asking price was $9500. I think his asking price was a bit optimistic, but it was a nice car none the less.

1989 IROC here's the window sticker.

1989 IROC here's a close-up of the stock wheel

1988 IROC Convertable This was a nice convertable priced at $8500. The car needed a new top, and perhaps a couple upgrades to the interior to show nicely.

1988 IROC Convertable Here's a pic of the interior. Very nice overall, but a few parts were showing their age.

Camaro Concept Pics

In one of the buildings was the 2009 Camaro Concept. Yeah, everybody knows what it looks like already, but I couldn't help myself and I filled up 2/3 of my memory card with pics of it. This car was the primary reason that I made the trip this year even though I've got other things that I should have spent my weekend doing. It did not disappoint me. The car is absolutely stunning in person. Here are a ton of pics for those that are interested. I tried to take some unique shots to show off highlights that other people's pics haven't shown.

Concept 1 Here's a pic of the back side

Concept 2 A close-up of the rear tire and exhaust pipe

Concept 3 A close-up of the bottom rear

Concept 4 This pic gives a good view of the body line surrounding the window opening. You don't see this subtle detail in most pics

Concept 5 The rear tail lights

Concept 6 An interior pic. The interior looks better in person than in pics, but personally I still don't care for the retro style inside.

Concept 7 A pic of the door sills. Very nice.

Concept 8 A pic of the door. The door appeared to be fiberglass. Most likely, the whole body is fiberglass, but it's VERY straight and smooth.

Concept 9 A close up of the 22" rear wheel.

Concept 10 The center console gauges. One of the few retro aspects that I hope makes production. These gauges are simulated, but hey... it's a concept car!

Concept 11 A close-up of the simulated dash gauges. A little flashy, but it's likely that the production car will have round gauges in a square bezel like the 69s had.

Concept 12 A close-up of the machined pedals and unique carpet material.

Concept 13 The seats with red stitching.

Concept 14 Up close, you can see that the Camaro logo has an orange surround.

Concept 15 A pic of the front fender and wheel.

Concept 16 A close-up of the fender logo.

Concept 17 The hood latch.

Concept 18 The front side marker.

Concept 19 The stunning engine bay.

Concept 20 The driver side of the engine bay.

Concept 21 The engine bay straight on. (I forgot to take the passenger-side engine bay pic)

Concept 22 A lower profile head-on engine shot.

Concept 23 The grill area.

Concept 24 The carbon-fiber underhood liner.

Concept 25 The LED light with the halo ring.

Concept 26 The LED light with halo ring without a camera flash.

Concept 27 The front fog light.

Concept 28 A random underneath shot that I took with the camera jammed under the car as far as I could reach.

Concept 29 Another underneath shows the rack and pinion steering.

Concept 30 A blurry underneath shows the rack and pinion again.

Concept 31 This side shot really shows off the dramatic curves made from the classic coke-bottle styling.

Concept 32 A close-up of the rear 1/4 bulge.

Concept 33 A nice shot with the hood down.

Concept 34 A close-up of the hood profile.

Concept 35 A nice shot from above with the hood down.

Concept 36 A shot from down lower with the hood down.

Concept 37 The slight cowl is beautifully understated.

Concept 38 The cowl and very tasteful windshield wipers.

Concept 39 A nice shot of the hood.

Concept 40 A nice shot showing the front fender line.

Concept 41 A shot from the front.

Concept 42 Another shot from the front.

Concept 43 Yet another shot from the front, down real low.

Non F-Body Highlights

On Saturday, we walked through the show field. There weren't as many cars as last year (likely due to the weather), but there were still a lot of nice cars. Rather than take pictures of them all, I decided to concentrate on the more unique or interesting cars, both the good and the bad. Here are the highlights:

Early 70s GMC Pickup This truck was a beautifully restored farm truck. One of the nicest vehicles at the show overall.

Early 70s GMC Pickup Here's an underhood shot of this 100% stock truck.

Early 70s GMC Pickup The interior was just as nice as the rest of the truck.

Modified S10 Pickup This truck was a work in progress. The owner seemed to be reasonably talented judging by the quality of the work being done, but some of the mods really make you wonder...

Modified S10 Pickup He installed an LCD monitor in the middle of the bed at an odd angle on the sheetmetal covering his rear axle, and molded his air tank into the bed at yet another odd angle.

Modified S10 Pickup In the interior, he's decided to replace his entire dash with speakers, including what looks like a spot for a couple 12" subs right in the middle.

Modified S10 Pickup Another shot of the interior.

Late 70s Silverado I took a pic of this truck last year too, but I wanted to take another!

Row of Grand Nationals

Monte Carlo This was a very nice Monte with 17" TT2s.

Wild Monte Carlo This Monte had wild paint, which really isn't a good idea on a car that gets driven a lot, because if you mess it up, you've got to live with it or pay big bucks to fix it. This one had a giant black spot on the lower front bumper where the paint was missing.

Nice Stock Monte Carlo This Monte Carlo was 100% stock, and in beautiful original condition.

55 Chevy This beautifully done 55 Chevy had the right stance and was beautiful all around.

55 Chevy The interior was equally as nice.

Vega Wagon This Vega wagon was rather odd looking, and unfortunately, the quality of the restoration left a bit to be desired.

Ricer Row Here's a shot of some GM sport compacts. Some, like the yellow one with the lambo doors, were well built. Most, like the Beretta and Sunfire, were poorly built with overspray, poor fitting panels, bad body work, cracking bondo and low budget parts.

Orange Impala SS The color in the picture is very poor. In person, this Impala had a beautiful red/orange metallic color with orange metallic stripes. The pictures do it no justice

Orange Impala SS Here's a pic of the stripes. Unfortunately, my camera did not capture the real color of the paints.

Nice Malibu This Malibu was in great shape, and had late model S10 wheels. Inside he had a timeslip showing an 11.8 second 1/4 mile, along with a couple pics of the car launching with the front wheels up in the air.

Can Am Pontiac This is a very rare (one of about 1,300 made) 77 Can Am in remarkable condition.

Lo Rider Pontiac This Pontiac got the full low-rider treatment, including a pair of cheap Audiobahn subs that the owner blasted all day long.

Olds Ciera An interesting Olds Ciera

Grand Am There were a lot of heavily modifed Grand Ams at the show, but this one had the nicest build quality by far.

Grand Am Interior

Grand Am Fiberglassed stereo install in the trunk

Cadillacs 2 CTS-Vs and one XLR

Cadillac XLR At first this XLR looked stock...

Cadillac XLR ... until I walked around back

Cadillac XLR Don't ask me why, but the owner sat it fitting to put trucker-style flaps at the back of the car along with a 5th tail pipe. It looked absolutely ridiculous on an $85k car.

Cadillac XLR The mostly stock interior was ruined with a $10 Wal Mart steering wheel cover.

1st, 2nd and 4th gen F-bodies

And now, on to the F-bodies. Since there are so few, I'm lumping all of the non-thirdgen cars together.

Late 2nd Gen Camaro This car was real nice, though I'm not sure that the 4th gen wheels compliment the car very well.

4th Gen Camaro I had to throw this pic in here. Look closely and you'll see Drag Radials on the front wheels.

4th Gen Camaro with Ghost Flames This Camaro had great paint and a set of 17" Cragar SS wheels.

67 Camaro with 16" Wheels The wheels really didn't look right on this car, but it was interesting none the less.

Tom Henry SS Camaro This 2002 Tom Henry SS Camaro boasted 425hp, Sunset Orange Metallic and painted Torque Thrust Wheels. Stunning!

Hugger Orange 69 SS Very nice 69 with 17" wheels, I believe they were Budnik if memory serves me.

69 RS with Candy Paint This outstanding 69 RS had a beautiful Candy red paint and 17" Torque Thrusts.

69 RS with Candy Paint This pic much more accurately shows the proper color. The other pic was washed out.

Primered up 67 Camaro This very cool work-in-progress was mostly in primer, had no interior, but boasted some redline wheels. This car looked great!

Black 79-81 Trans Am The only thing it was missing was Sally Field!

78 Macho TA One of 204 78 Macho TAs built. Nice car.

78 Macho TA same car

4th gen Firehawk

4th gen WS6 This beautiful WS6 had gold stripes and polished Torque Thrust wheels.

Mid 70s Formula This mid 70s Formula was a very well built car, though those wheels leave a bit to be desired

Mid 70s Formula LS1! Not only that, but the entire front suspension, subframe and wheel well area from a 2000 Camaro Z28. Stunning craftsmanship

Mid 70s Formula Notice that the entire wheel-well structure is 4th gen stuff. Also check out the quality of the work.

Mid 70s Formula Other side. It looks like a stock 4th gen under the hood.

Mid 70s Formula 2000 Camaro interior. If he could clean up a couple details on the dash & steering wheel, and put different wheels on the car, I think he'd wind up in every GM magazine there is!

Thirdgen Firebirds

88-90 GTA Nice 4th gen spoiler. The car looks great on the outside, but unfortunately that doesn't carry through to the interior or engine bay.

88-90 GTA I've shown pics of this GTA in the past. Previously, a lot of the stuff under the hood was painted with that spraycan color-shifting crap. This year he covered that with spraycan gray paint. An improvement, but it still looks sloppy. The blue and purple split loom tubing doesn't help.

88-90 GTA The interior suffers too. Cheesy gold colored door-edge trim adorns the center console, along with a Megashifter. The Console was painted black, and the steering wheel got a $10 Wal Mart cover.

88-90 GTA At first the stereo install doesn't look bad, but upon closer examination you can see sloppy carpet work, imprecise edges along the back, and the use of very thin plexi for the enclosure.

White 86 Trans Am This guy sure likes flames.

White 86 Trans Am Engine bay. More flames. He also painted the intake (throttle body and all) with a rattle can.

White 86 Trans Am Notice the NOS floor mats. Go back and look at the engine bay pic. No NOS.

Blue Formula Firebird dcjredline had his Formula at the show

Red Formula Conlinj had his nice Formula and took first place in his category. Once he paints the red into those Ronal wheels, his car should really attract a lot of attention!

Red Formula Conlinj's formula from the back. The paint looked great, and so did the Trans Am tail lights.

Thirdgen Camaros

On to the thirdgen Camaros. I took a pic of every thirdgen that was in the show field, exept for a super clean blue IROC without the stock stripes that I've taken pics of in the past. He must have saw me coming and left before I could hassle him about the stripes!

82 Pace Car Let's start the show with the actual 1982 Daytona 500 Pace Car. Visually this looks the same as the replicas except for the light bar on top and the light switch inside. Under the hood is an aluminum 350, but since the hood was closed, no money shot.

82 Pace Car Here you can see the light bar as well as the flag poles

82 Pace Car The front has clear covers over the headlights

82 Pace Car A close-up of the headlights. Unfortunately, the pic didn't come out like I'd hoped. The way these mount is quite different (and better) than the aftermarket covers that some people have.

82 Pace Car Interior

82 Pace Car another interior shot

82 Pace Car Here's the best shot I could get of the light switch.

Black camaro and a white RS In the foreground is a black Camaro with an interesting hood piece. In the center of the hood piece is a bowtie that lights up. The RS was a little bit rough.

White 89 IROC This clean IROC had the stock 15" wheels

Red Camaro This Red Camaro had aftermarket wheels, a high-rise spoiler, and 88 Sport Coupe badges.

Black 86 IROC This clean IROC was in great shape, though it did have aftermarket carpet with an incorrect heel pad.

Yellow 86 IROC You don't see many yellow IROCs with the gold trim package. This one was in fantastic shape.

Red RS This red RS had a chevy-orange engine block and air cleaner assembly, painted headlight covers, and crystal-clear turn signal lamps. It also had a Harwood cowl hood.

Red RS Close-up of the headlights and turn signal lamps.

87 IROC This red IROC was solid over all, but it needed some improvements before it could contend for a trophy. Most notable items needing improvement would be the red headlight buckets and the interior condition.

Black RS This RS was very straight and clean overall.

Gray IROC This Gray IROC was in good shape overall, but not as highly detailed as most of the other cars. A fresh coat of wax and some tire dressing would have gone a long way on this car.

Red 91-92 Z28 This Z28 was in great shape and appeared to be all stock except for the painted grill.

83 or 84 Z28 This early Z28 was in great shape in my personal favorite color. It had the Lier Siegler seats inside. Too bad the windows were up, because I would have loved some interior shots.

83 or 84 Black Z28 This was a super clean LG4 Z28.

82 Pace Car This was an 82 Pace Car replica. It was in good original condition overall, but could use a restoration.

82 Pace Car Interior. Again, all there, but some items could use freshening-up.

Red Z28 convertable From the fenders back, this car looked fantastic. Unfortunately, the paint on the front bumper was a disaster, and the interior was starting to show it's age. The chrome Z06 wheels complimented this car nicely.

Red Z28 convertable This is a close-up of the front bumper. You can see that it is badly stone-chipped. Look closer and you'll find an LT1 under the hood. The engine bay was rather dirty overall, but with some TLC and some time, I'm sure it'll come around.

91-92 Z28 This Z28 was clean. It had aftermarket wheels and some chrome trim on the door edges, along with a chrome hood latch and some chome on the engine.

Black 86 IROC This super clean IROC appeared to be 100% original.

Black 83-84 Z28 This early Z28 had the L69 motor and was in fantastic condition in and out.

Blue IROC This car was one of the stars of the show. Absolutely phenominal in every way.

White IROC This was a very clean 88-89 IROC that was clean in and out, with minor mods including SLP runners.

Wild Thing! This heavily modified IROC drag racer was all business.

Red IROC This 88-89 IROC was completely stock except for a black stripe on the body line. Very nice, original car.

Red IROC The interior of the IROC was equally nice, with all the factory original equipment including the original floor mats in perfect condition.

86 Z28 Here's a super clean 86 Z28 with the LG4. It appeared to be 100% factory original.

90-92 RS Here's a super clean white RS Camaro with the red interior.

90-92 RS Here's a close up of the immaculate red interior. The red interiors take a lot of criticism, but when they're as clean as this, they're beautiful.

Teal Z28 Here's a real clean 91-92 Z28 with a few mods, such as chromed stock wheels, a strut tower bar, and Edelbrock runners.

Black TPI RS Mkos1980's black RS with a TPI motor under the steel Goodmark hood.

Blue 88-89 IROC This blue IROC was in desparate need of paint, but the chrome 17" IROC wheels and clear side markers gave the car a good look.

The Burnout Contest

This was actually after the Bikini contest, but I want to show that last. The burnout contest was limited to the first 15 who entered. Unfortunately, they only had 4 guys enter, with a 5th at the end. The 5th was actually a Dodge Neon, but like a typical ricer, his only purpose in life is to impress others, so he caved into the peer pressure and roasted the tires all the way down to the cords even though he had to drive home on them!!

Chevy Monza This car was very loud and sounded outstanding.

Chevy Suburban This guy had this 'burb for sale for $1300, but wasn't afraid to thrash it. It was very loud and sounded quite healthy.

69 Chevelle This car was super clean with very nice paint. I was surprised to see such a nice car in the contest. He won the contest by coming back and doing it a 2nd time. Both times he kept his foot in it until his engine temps forced him to stop.

2000 SS This was a car from one of the manufacturer's booth. He couldn't do too much because he had slicks on the car, but gave a nice show just the same. The car sounded fantastic.

Neon This car sat there forever, just tossing more and more smoke. It was a very impressive burnout.

The Bikini Contest

And finally, the Bikini contest. $500 for first place, $300 for 2nd place, and $100 for 3rd. There were more girls this year than last year, but besides the top 3, it was slim pickings.

Bikini 1 This was girl #1, who was probably the best looking.

Bikini 2 Here's all 7 girls. From right to left: #1 looked great. #2 needed to eat a few cheeseburgers. #3 should give her cheeseburgers to #2. #4 looked great. #5 looked ok. #6 looked great. #7 looked ok.

Bikini 3 A closeup of #4. She owned a 67 Camaro that was at the show, which made the crowd go nuts, and is probably why she won.

Bikini 4 Here's #4 accepting her ribbon.

That's all until next year!