Well, Ain't THAT a Kick in the Nuts...

[BobV]

Buy the wife a Mustang.
Help wife pick out parts for Mustang.
Pay for the parts she orders.
Install the parts.
Talk her into going to car show with you.
Clean up BOTH cars.
End up in the same class.

She Wins.
You Don't. :ns

:rulz

 

[janschutz]

Yep, been there several times.

 

[6t6red]

Do I dare ask what is in the bag in front of the winning car? :ns

 

[BobV]

Bag for People's Choice ballots in front of each car. :bow

 

[RyanG85]

Congrats to your wife. Its a sweet car but by no means should it be picked over your car. Part of the problem with shows now. Showroom cars with a few bolt ons beating a well preserved piece of history.

 

[RagTop]

At least someone took the time and effort to restore your wife's car. You can take some pride in that. I once attended a judged local show where a guy with a brand new Mustang with the dealer's plates still on it won his class. I guess the judges figured he'd done a magnificent job of keeping the car original for the whole two weeks he'd owned it. The car wasn't in my class or I would have been somewhat more sanguine about the incident.

 

[KBMWRS]

At least someone took the time and effort to restore your wife's car. You can take some pride in that. I once attended a judged local show where a guy with a brand new Mustang with the dealer's plates still on it won his class. I guess the judges figured he'd done a magnificent job of keeping the car original for the whole two weeks he'd owned it. The car wasn't in my class or I would have been somewhat more sanguine about the incident.

Same happend to me. A guy bought the car the night before....and drove it across the street. He won 1st place.

 

[guruatbol]

My first show I got beat by a car that the girls daddy built using his staff at his Ford dealership. She bragged that he was going to buy her a paxton for her car and have it put on.

Her car was a slight bit nicer than my 67, but she had done zero work. Her hubby didn't even do any work on it.

Mel

 

[AzPete]

No matter how a car is bought or restored, there will always be somebody who feels it was not done the right way to win a class.

The car should be judged on how it appears and preforms....not how much somebody did or paid to get it there. Imagine judging based on how much and type work was done....

Classification is the issue. If you have ever been seriously involved in show prep....one of the most difficult tasks is classifying the cars. Owners want classes down to the type wheels....show managers want them grouped much larger for ease of parking, trophies and number of judges. Just doing Mustangs presents enough issues, and then add in all the other model and years at an open show....and each year adds more problems.

Never seen one where everyone was happy, including me having been on both sides of the issue.

 

[RagTop]

There was a letter to the editor in Mustang Monthly several years ago about a guy from New York City who rented a Shelby GT500 from Hertz and drove it to a big Mustang show in New Hampshire. He said he won the Shelby class with the car. If I had been one of the owners of the other Shelbys, you bet I would have been hacked off about it. Beyond this guy's pride in winning under questionable circumstances, his real issue was that he blew the engine on the Hertz car somewhere in Connecticut on the return trip and those money grubbers at Hertz were trying to make him pay for the tow. So, I'm thinking that this IS an example of the judges needing to take a little closer look at the source of the car. Most shows are rife with misclassifications and it's up to the people putting on the show to sort that stuff out when they become aware of it and correct those situations. Sadly, too often their method of dealing with it is to hand the first place trophy over to the offender. If you guys want an experience in competitive car shows, try the Corvette world. I campaigned a 69 427 coupe in C3 Stock class for about three years. There were all kinds of protests because the Vette guys are really catholic about what constitutes "stock" down to the trim rings on your rally wheels. My car won many of the shows it was entered in, but it was beaten too. Sometimes by really nice cars and sometimes by cars that weren't actually stock. It's up to the show folks to actually do something that might be hard rather than just go with the flow.