[Amc-list] Great trip to Concord, NC with wife - 4 AMC spottings, much more...

[Jerry Casper <gremlingts@xxxxxxxxx>]

  I gave my wife the Jeff Gordon driving experience for Christmas, and we left on Thursday May 29th to fulfill the dream. She drove the car that evening around 7 pm, top speed 143.13 MPH, 7th out of 20 people posted that evening - not bad! She did 18 laps...drove 280? miles just to drive 27 miles in a circle...but lots of fun for her! 
  Note - Dave Moeller - the motel we stayed at is EXACTLY the same one I met you at in June? 1997, for the AMC Concord show, where we shared a room! It was the nicest cheap motel my wife found online - when we were pulling into it, I said Hey, I RECOGNIZE this place! What a strange coincidence. Almost 10 years exactly, and we stay in a motel I have been in before for another special event. Cool! 
  Next day, we did the NASCAR shop tour, with a personal tour guide, NOT a bus or van tour - we got to go where WE wanted. We found out later that the guy who gave us the tour, is the OWNER of the business! He drove us around all day in his own car, giving his personal knowledge of the area's history. He used to work for some of the NASCAR teams in years past, retired, then got into the tour business by accident. I got to go see the actual Legends car factory( a few miles away from Lowes Motor Speedway), and visit the observation platform overlooking the production floor...wish I could have gotten down to the ACTUAL floor! Ah, well. Still, our tour guide said no tour he knows of commercially would ever have stopped at this facility, this was a personal side tour, and he knows people there, too. Pretty neat to have a guide like this! It cost us $79 each for my wife and I, all day, but for the service we got, and the personal choice of where to go, when,
 etc., it was WELL worth the price we paid! 
  Anyway, after a great morning of tours, the afternoon AMC spottings began. We were heading to the Curb Records museum in Kannapolis, which has some historic cars, and spotted a red Gremlin X near Dale Earnhardt Blvd. Got to the museum, it was closed, but he knows the people, so he called the guy inside and got him to open the museum up for us! Incredible! First thing I spotted as we were driving into the parking lot, was the yellow and white AMC Metropolitan thru the window, in the middle of all the race cars! Turns out the guy bought it for his kids to drive, by the time they got legal, they said Uh - uh!, we ain't gonna get caught DEAD in that thing! So it's been stored and hardly driven ever since new. It's a '53 Met with contintental kit. I got some pics of it...hoo boy! I got the guy there to pretend to gas it with the NASCAR gas can...we all got a laugh out of that! Our tour guide said I was about to make him famous ( his name is Gene Benfield,
 btw ) I will be posting pictures of that and more, probably on MySpace or another similar place - to be posted later. 
  Richard Petty's 199th win car is in this museum ( the 200th win, Ronald Reagan called him at the track to congratulate him, and that car is in the Smithsonian Museum in DC ), and more interesting open-wheel cars, some of Dale Earnhardt's early cars are here, where he got his early sponsorship from Curb Records.
  After we left there, he took us over to see Dale's Mom's house, she still lives there. On the way, I spotted what looked like a Concord wagon, not an Eagle or Hornet. So 3 AMC cars ( ok, 2 and a Nash ) within an hour. Not bad!
  One of the tours was at the Penske place, and they had 3 BIG murals on the back wall in the shop of all 3 versions of the Matador racing car - 1st Gen, 2nd Gen, then the opera window 2nd Gen. Pretty cool! I tried to find someone to talk to about the AMC racing specs, hidden photos, etc, but was unsuccessful, no one was around to talk to. They had three AMC-related things for sale there - a 48 x 20 poster, with all 3 Matador types shown at the top, plus other more modern cars, for $50 ( I was going to do it, but decided to pass ). They had a T-shirt with the opera window Mat on it, $20, so I bought that, and a Penske coffee mug. They also had a 3-car racing diecast set, 1/43rd scale, with a Hudson Hornet, grey. Over $100, so I passed on that, too. Sigh. 
  We left Saturday morning for Danville, VA to see a combo airshow / carshow at the airport. We took a helicopter ride, as my wife has waited for 40 years since she was 11 and her Grandma told her No on a 5-week vacation trip. THAT was fun! A Robinson R-22, I believe. Some neat old cars, none AMC related unfortunately.
  Anyway, headed home today, Sunday June 1, and while traveling Rt. 58 east, we both spotted the dark green '73-74 Javelin, plain car half way between Danville and South Boston area. That was the last siting we had. 
  Got home Sunday at 2 pm, glad to be here ( and so are the cats, they were stir-crazy from 3.5 days staying in the house! LOL ). So, time to download pictures of all the stuff I captured on pixels ( I THINK I took over 650 pictures! Try THAT with film! LOL! )  So I'll be busy the rest of Sunday afternoon, inside, nursing some sunburn from Saturday's airfield outing, and getting videos and pics downloaded ( 670 pictures alone on the still camera, haven't counted the videos yet - probably 20 or so ). So I've got some sorting and renaming to do. 
  Well, all for now. Hope you enjoyed my mini-vacation recital. :) I'll post where my pics are later. 

Jerry Casper
8 Gremlins
1 Javelin
1 Pacer wagon
1 Hornet
1 Matador Coupe



      
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