Hello Car fans! The 4th Annual Mopars In The Park Car Show this year was a tremendous success! Held at Woodmere park in South Venice, Florida on December 10th, we had over 120 vehicles show up for the festivities. Starting off the show was a very special ceremony of the US Marines color guard from the local Port Charlotte ROTC, made possible by the efforts of a very special ROTC member, Samantha Covert.

You could see a rare 1970 AAR ‘Cuda, a 1973 logging truck, ‘59 Fury, 1968 Hemi Road Runner, ‘64 Chrysler wagon, 1970 AMX, 2007 Trucks & Chargers, and many cool Jeeps all parked together in a relaxed park with trees, lakes, walking trails and even a dog park!

The Florida chapter of Dodge Truckworld showed up in grand fashion with over 25 trucks, and their club staged a Toys For Tots drive generating a huge pile of toys that were later presented to the US Marines in the afternoon ceremonies.
We were able to collect over 3,000 pounds of canned goods and food stuffs for the local Southwest Florida Holiday Food Pantry. We accomplished this by keeping the show FREE to enter with free food through sponsorship, and thereby requesting canned goods as the entry fee. Many of the attendees brought huge generous amounts of food for the holiday giving.

Another reason why this show is so special is that we could have many different groups attend. Chrysler had purchased AMC back in the 1980’s, so therefore Jeep, AMC, Nash and Hudson are all included in the Mopar family, along with all those Dodge, Chrysler and Plymouth muscle cars and trucks. In sum, the show represented a varied and diverse cross section of classic American iron.

At the conclusion of the show, trivia prize questions were followed by 100 trophies awarded to the top cars, trucks and Jeeps. Everyone agreed that the park setting is a fantastic place for the car show, because there is so much to do in addition to looking at beautiful vehicles.

This particular show has steadily grown larger over the years due to the fact that we continue to generate larger and larger charitable contributions, and that is something our show attendees feel really good about; making a difference. CN