From July 22nd to July 26th a massive herd of Mustang enthusiasts got together for Mustang Week. Here at National Speed we do a significant amount of work on Mustangs so we decided to participate by attending the car show on Friday and the “cruise-in” on Saturday. I couldn’t imagine these events taking place in a more appropriate town than good ole Myrtle Beach, so with National Speed’s Chief Technician Bobby along for the ride, we headed out to the Vegas of the south.
Waking up at 6am on a Friday was a little rough for me, but I eventually managed to fall out of bed and get ready for the car show at Colonial Mall. We were there early, VERY EARLY (Myra instructed us to be there at 7, so we had no other choice) so we set up our tent, sat back in the chairs, and waited. We didn’t have long to wait though, within a couple hours the parking lot went from this:
To this:
At the National Speed tent we chatted up hundreds of Mustang enthusiasts and passed out info about the shop. We also gave away free t-shirts and raffle tickets for the chance to win an SCT tuner. A few of our customers/friends were at the show and we got them into the “restricted” area to park their cars next to our booth. I’d like to thank Dave Crawford, Chris and Crystal Durham, and Dave Tilley for displaying their cars at our booth and helping us out all weekend at the tent!
At the end of Friday an estimated 4,000 people had attended the event and over 500 mustangs were present in the show area. I’ve never seen a group of a specific model cars that size in my life.
After a very long day in the sun, we packed up the tent and prepared for a night on the town. We kicked things off by meeting up with Chris and his wife Crystal for dinner at Joe’s Crab Shack where we ate some delicious seafood and drank some exquisite brewed beverages. From there Bobby and I decided to stop by a random restaurant on the beach. It had seating right off of the strip so we of course sat there to watch the Mustangs drive by while quenching our thirst and chatting with some tourists.
Saturday morning came entirely too early and we were off to the Colonial Mall to do it all over again. This day was not a judged show, but a “cruise-in,” which is where everyone parks their cars and walks around checking out each other’s sweet Stangs. All of the vendors were set up again in full force and we passed out another 75 free t-shirts within the first couple of hours. Saturday topped Friday’s numbers; there were an estimated 5,000 people and 750+ mustangs at the Colonial Mall!
To top it all off Steve Saleen made an appearance and signed autographs. Although I‘m not a Mustang owner, I do have a lot of respect for Mr. Saleen so I had to get an autograph. But even better than getting the autograph was the debut of the new Mustang Saleen prototype. Between Mr. Saleen making an appearance, and the revealing of a never-seen-before Mustang, I realized how big an event Mustang Week has become. Not only did Mustang Week exceed my expectations, but I had an absolute BLAST and we here at National Speed look forward to being involved even more in the event next year.
Disclaimer: this post was edited because Scott is too awesome. All records of his night life activities have been deleted to protect the innocent.