By Brian Losness

Time for the Reunion, plus revisiting past stories

It's fall, that time of year when the leaves start changing colors and the morning air is brisk and clean. October, to those of you are nostalgia drag racers or fans of nostalgia drag racing, means one thing: the California Hot Rod Reunion is just around the corner.

This year is the 20th annual Reunion. As Dave McClellan says on the promo, "They didn’t think there would be more than one, twenty years ago." Big thanks to Blake Bowser and his staff for persevering through a crappy economy and keeping their noses to the grindstone, putting on this very special event.

This year there will be one change from the 2010 agenda. The Funny Car class will now be down to a sixteen car show from last year's 32 car field. According to my colleague at DRO, Darr Hawthorne, about 39 floppers are slated to be in in the pits at “The Patch”, something that will be exciting for both the competitors and the fans making the pilgrimage to Fomosa Dragway. In addition to the racing on track, the Cacklefest on Saturday night is something that is always a crowd favorite and brings out some very fine nostalgia fuelers.

This should make things even more interesting, as it appears that everybody shy of the Pope and Obama are either contemplating or are actually in the process of building nostalgia nitro funny cars. Now I know I might be overstating the facts by a tiny bit, but there a lot of these cars under construction.
                                                                                                                       
Speaking of new cars that should be out, it will be exciting to see the debut of Dennis Taylor’s new car, along with the first outing of Chuck and Del Worsham’s new ride, among many others.

The Worshams have been working on a version of the 'Win This Car' Super Shops Special Plymouth Arrow. You know, the one that took Ed “the Ace” McCulloch and Bernie Lewis to the Winner's Circle at the 1980 US Nationals. The car will not be painted as of the CHRR, but will be for the March Meet. Ron Capps will once again be behind the wheel for the Worshams

Speaking of the 'Win This Car', there was some speculation as to whether or not the car was actually given away. Some reports say it was, others claim that it was seen for sale in National Dragster some time the next year, with contact information for Super Shops. But that's a topic for one of those nights standing under the awning after a long day racing and consuming a few adult beverages. 

There is unfortunately no word on many Top Fuel cars are going to be racing at Bakersfield. I hope for God’s sake there are at least sixteen cars. I know that Harris, Murphy, and Bartone will be there. My hope is that, over the winter, the car owners and NHRA can come up with a plan to help revitalize the top fuel class and get more cars out at the races.  Because SHORT FIELDS SUCK!

A gentle reminder to both the NHRA and Top Fuel car owners: GET YOUR SHIT TOGETHER and fix this mess! In my opinion, the Top Fuel class might not be able to weather another year of crappy car counts like they had this year.

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