This past Sunday, Directly Connected Magazine attended the 24th Annual Mopar Madness show in Langley, British Columbia, Canada. Usually held on the second weekend of July and put on every year by the Vancouver chapter of the Mopars Unlimited Car club, it’s proudly known as one, if not, the biggest Mopar show in Western Canada.
The show has always attracted a very strong showing of classic Mopars with exceptionally high numbers of A-bodies and E-bodies. Since around 2005 or so, it has also attracted a very high number of modern Mopars as well! Originally held at Kwantlen University in Langley, the show usually hosted anywhere between 250-to-400 cars. Almost every year, the show has been treated with exceptionally good weather!
In 2010, after conflict with the University regarding the constantly rising rental rates for their parking lot, the organizers decided to move the show five minutes up the road to George Preston Recreation Center.
For the first year or two after the move, turn-out numbers stayed relatively low, almost as though everyone didn’t get the memo about the venue change. Most favor the new venue though for it’s forestry setting with the evergreen trees providing tons of shade in the hot sun. At the past location at the university, shade was very scarce and most boiled on the hot asphalt.
For 2013, turnout numbers jumped significantly and even more so in 2014! Unfortunately this year, the weather forecast just wasn’t in the cards and all the local weather stations called for showers on the day of the show. That didn’t stop most of the diehards though from coming out. A-body Mopar registration numbers stayed high along with the modern Mopar numbers! B-body Mopar registration numbers stayed about par. The biggest noticeable difference though was from the E-body camp.
While the show usually has anywhere between 15-to-25 E-body Challengers and ‘Cudas in the stock and modified classes combined, this year’s numbers were the lowest they have ever been. With only three or four E-bodies registered in the stock class and five or so modified E-bodies registered, it was very apparent that most from that group were scared off by the calls for rain. Fortunately it only rained for a brief 10-minute span just before noon and then got sunny and warm in the afternoon!
The forecast for rain didn’t scare off the Aero car guys either. The show featured two 1969 Daytona Chargers from Washington state, one of which was a 1-of-1 A4 silver 440-powered Daytona sporting red interior and a black wing and the other being a Hemi Orange example! It also featured a T7 Bronze 440 powered 1969 Charger 500 and a V-code 1970 Superbird! Other very strong turnout numbers included the C-body and front-wheel-drive classes.
Mopar Madness is an always evolving show with classes changing almost every year. It’s a show we at Directly Connected Magazine have marked on our calendars year after year and one we will never miss!
Cody Cole; nice coverage of the event. i only made there once, in ’99 i think, before i became disabled and returned to Illinois from Tacoma, WA. your pics are GREAT, way better than what i would take. just one question, do you have any solo pics of the green ’71 RoadRunner in this pic? https://moparconnectionmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/004041.jpg – if you do can you add it to this coverage? or send it to my e-mail below? not my car, i just like 1971 MoPars. if you can/do; THANX in advance — if you can’t, don’t have; NO WORRIES
KennyJ
P.S. to Kevin Shaw — THANX for getting the commenting reCAPTCHA fixed. i tried many times to comment on articles; UNSUCCESSFULLY. I sent you an e-mail about it and you got it fixed, so THANX from me and i’m sure many others….
W-O-W !!
it just dawned on me that this is from 2015; 3+ years ago.
Cody Cole; i’d still like the pic, if you still have one. i don’t know how long you save your pics. so LMK
KenJ