The Chrysler
Indianapolis Concours Grand Prix International Car Show (Wow! that
is a mouth full) is part of the annual Formula 1 United
States
Grand Prix Race event. The Race is held Sunday at the Famed
Indianapolis 500 Motor Speedway. The Concours is held downtown at
the Beautiful Monument Circle. There were over 200 cars displayed.
The promoter's take liberties to compare their show to the likes
of Meadow Brook, Pebble Beach, Alt Park and Amelia Island. I must
differ with that comparison. The Indy show is Very Good, and was
certainly worth the trip for me, but there were quite a few cars
that were less than Concours Condition, although they were still
more than show worthy.
This years feature Marque was Stutz. Harry Stutz built wonderful
cars in Indianapolis, Indiana from 1911 - 1937. There were about
20 Stutz cars on display. The turn of the century Stutz Motorcar
factory is still standing and has been restored and is used as a
business center.
Chrysler is one of the major sponsors. As always, Chrysler had a
really great display with their Past and Present Concept Cars
along with a really neat Ride and Drive promotional operating
throughout the day. Chrysler brought a wonderful selection of test
vehicles to be made
available for the test drives. There were
Cross-Fires in both hardtop and Convertibles. PT Cruisers's were
offered the same way. You know that there had to be 300's and
there were plenty of them. Most of the 300's were Hemi's and Hemi
SRT8's. There were Vipers there, but they were just parked...
sorry, no tire kickers. The Test Drive Cars left from Monument
Circle and were test driven throughout Downtown Indy. The Chrysler
folks seemed to be busy all day. I would like to have taken one of
the Vanilla 300 SRT8's home myself. Only one thing was preventing
this, my wallet was about $43,000 light... that always seems to be
the case.
Downtown Indy is very nice and stayed busy all day with the Concours
Crowd, Weekend Tourist and the Grand Prix Group.. There is a great
selection of restaurant's and clubs at Monument Circle and they
all seemed to be doing a booming business.
Next Years Concours date is June 17th 2006. There will be two
featured Marques, Porsche and Cord, so mark your calendar.
Visit the
2005 Show Photo's and the
2006 Show Photo's.
There was not a Show held in 2007, but there are plans 2008
event.
