Great day in Las Vegas for Mopar NHRA teams

For NHRA Full Throttle Drag Racing Series Pro Stock driver Allen Johnson, the dream the Mopar Dodge Avenger driver has harbored for 17 years is so close he can almost touch the championship trophy, almost taste the champagne.

Johnson emerged triumphant in a Mopar final-round duel on Sunday, Oct. 28, at the NHRA Nationals at The Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, knocking out teammate Vincent Nobile. Johnson is now 126 points ahead of the second-place Jason Line — the Team Mopar veteran needs only to qualify at the season-ending NHRA Finals in Pomona, Calif., to clinch his first title.

And as strong as the day was for Johnson, it was even better for Mopar. The brand celebrated not one, but two Pro class wins at Vegas, as Ron Capps defeated fellow Dodge Charger R/T driver Jack Beckman in an all-Mopar Funny Car final. The Don Schumacher Racing (DSR) duo are 1-2 in the points standings, with Capps now just four points behind Beckman in the chase for the Funny Car championship — giving Mopar the distinct possibility of dual championship celebrations at Pomona Nov. 8-11.

We’ll have a close look at all the triumphant Mopar cars coming in the new issue of Mopar Max. (Ron Lewis photo) [10/31/2012]

Fins exhibit open in February at Petersen Automotive Museum

The Chrysler Corporations' Vice President of Styling, the famed Virgil Exner, was responsible in one way or another for most of the company's concepts cars in the 1950s, including this 1956 Chrysler Plainsman study.

An exhibit of automobile fin designs will open Saturday, February 23, 2013, in the Grand Salon at the Petersen Automotive Museum, 6060 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90036.

Today, fins are remembered as the outward expression of our automotive engineering prowess during the height of American postwar optimism, but they were first used far earlier than most would imagine.

The Petersen Automotive Museum exhibit, Fins, will feature more than a dozen vehicles ranging from icons like the 1959 Cadillac and Exner-designed Chrysler to the impossibly Art Deco 1937 Delage Aerosport and wild 1952 Spohn Palos. Together, they speak to a period of automotive history during which the public craved chrome-laden dream machines and imagination was the stylist’s only limit.

The Museum has many ongoing exhibits, including The Hot Wheels Hall of Fame, which features Hot Wheels® full-size and die-cast cars, original models, wooden patterns, injection molds and drawings of original vehicle designs.

For more information on other exhibits go to www.petersen.org. [10/31/2012]