Murfreesboro and Mt Juliet Tennessee Cruise-ins July 17-18 2009
Every week there is a pretty nice cruise in held at the Avenues mall in Murfreesboro on Friday nights, and another nice one on Saturday nights at the Providence Mall in Mt. Juliet. I typically go to the Murfreesboro Cruise-in every Friday. This particular weekend Renee' and I met a very interesting fellow.
We saw a 1970 T/A Challenger and walked over to take a look. Turns out it was the real deal and NOT a knock off. This particular model Challenger was built to participate in the Trans Am Racing Series and 2500 units were required for homologation. The owner infromed us that Dodge had a hard time building that many T/A Challengers in the two months alloted, so Dodge had to cheat to get qualified. They had drivers go out of the counting area, then drive back in to have the cars recounted as if they were seperate builds. A pretty interesting story, and makes for a very rare car. The owner was VERY personable, and let us sit in the car for a few photographs.
So the next night we decided to go to the Mt. Juliet Cruise-in. Who do we see? The same guy, but this time with a Plymouth Cuda. He claimed it was one of only two made with the exact options this car had. He had picked it up in Arizona and took two years to restore it to factory new condition. After talking to him a while longer, it turned out he actually owns SEVEN muscle cars from the 1970s including a Road Runner with the flip up hood scoop, complete with all the original Road Runner decals. He's also been on the show Mucle Car in one of their "Flash Back" segments with the Road Runner. If you wanna see the Road Runner segment, just fast forward to the exact middle of the video. Pretty cool stuff. He's invited us over to his shop to see some of his other "in progress" cars and we plan to go visit soon.
We also came across this Challenger which started life as a 1970 six cylinder and has been transformed into this modern monster with a 440 cubic inch motor punched out to a 500 and putting down 750 horse power at the rear wheels.
The Mt. Juliet Cruise-in is quite popular, especially on nice nights like this one where temperatures were in the 70s with low humidity.