Cars in the Park 2016 - Zwartkops Raceway

The Cars in the Park events are the kind that you simply cannot miss out on. At Zwartkops the whole infield of the track and just about every other parking space available gets filled with some superb examples of all kinds of cars; stock old cars, modified cars and a whole bunch in between. There is always loads of eye candy, it's almost a visual overload. If you're busy with a project car of your own, visiting the event will fill your head with more ideas than you know what to do with.

    Cars in the Park is notoriously busy, it's best to get there early. I only managed to arrive at around 11:30 thanks to a shoot I had to have done beforehand and I was pleasantly surprised to drive straight in and get an ok parking. While that was a bonus, the problem with arriving as that time is that a lot of cars that I wanted to see had already left. You have to understand that many of the cars are owned by the older generation and there's no way in hell that they will miss their Sunday arvie nap time. Leaving was a different story, it took 45 minutes to get to the road from my parking, all of a kilometre away. That wasn't fun, but even in winter - aircon FTW.  

    Walking up and down through the various shaded parkings and the pits was pure chaos, there were so many people that getting pics of the cars on their own was pretty much an impossibility. Doing a walking lap of the track was better, but I still had to wait for a while for people to clear out of my shots - I think I posted the longest lap time in the history of the track. The pics you see here and that will be on the Chris Wall Media Facebook page are good, I'm happy with them, but the best old school and muscle cars I shot won't be seen there, instead you'll catch them in an upcoming issue of SA Hotrods, which is the main reason I attended. 

    While for the most part the cars were great, I can't help but be annoyed by the number of new school cars seen on "display". Sure some were cool and worthy of being there, but many weren't. There were stock looking Corsas and Toyotas and Golfs. I know it's a show for all cars but I think there should be some sort of criteria for the cars that get to park on the track. Some people towed their cars to the event, which is all good and well, but then they should park their tow vehicles in another spot - too much prime real estate was taken up with cars that simply should not have been there. I think the event may be too big to control this, but it sure does suck when you're drooling over a whole queue of awesome muscle cars and then spot a flipping stock-ish Mk1 Golf with wheels and a drop. Yeah, yeah, I know everyone is proud of their car, but there's a time and a place for them to show off and Cars in the Park is not that. 

   I'm keen to see what next year holds and I'll try get there a little earlier, I was bummed to see Basil leaving in his LS-swapped 'Vette as I arrived, along with a few other choice showcars...  The rest of the pics can be seen on my Facebook page.