Story and photos by Bill Blankenship

With apologies to Yogi Berra, Spring Fling 2000 was de'ja vu all over again, and that's a good thing. While the more than 500 cars each day spanned the Dodge/Chrysler/Plymouth dynasty back to the 1920s, muscle was the magic this weekend, and the big thunder cars were represented in droves.

Spring Fling, brainchild and annual showcase for the Chrysler Performance West car club, has grown in its 14 years to become the biggest all-Mopar show and swap meet west of the Mississippi. CPW succeeds in keeping the event a cool and casual gathering, no mean feat considering the two-day tally saw more than 900 show vehicles settled onto the manicured acres, with over 15,000 free-admission spectators. For some of the earlier models, the San
Fernando Valley Walter R Chrysler Club pitched in with historical assessments of the older cars-a big help when it came to judging.

Even the swap meet held an essence of the good ol' days, when you could count on enthusiasts to pack up the garage overflow to share with their Mopar brethren. We know supplies of OE stuff are thinning out more every year, but this year Los Angeles proved to be a treasure trove of used oddities and essentials, and we know lots of shoppers missed the "show" part of Spring Fling juggling armloads of goodies back to the parking lot. (Overheard one guy who was show & telling

everyone who would hold still about the radio for his '65 he just snagged for $10. Beat that!) Smart shoppers shopped on Saturday, came back Sunday for the show. The aftermarket rallied to cover what the swap meet couldn't, with 21 mini-stores on the grounds- everything from hardware to hard core, concours-quality interiors to collector car insurance.

In L.A., star spotting is an unofficial pastime. If you could tear your eyes from the cars, you might have glimpsed Paul LeMat (from American Graffiti), Jay Leno, industry legends Dick Landy and Doug Thorley, Just Shoot Me's David Spade (himself a Road Runner flogger), or Rage Against The Machine's Tom Morello (who was showing his own ragtop Demon). A couple of celebs even joined the 160 cars on the Saturday Night Cruise. In fact, some cars were celebrities themselves, like the Hemi Under Glass'Cuda, Mickey Weise's race car, TV's Green Hornet abomination, the Brady Bunch Plymouth Fury, and Mannix's '67 Dart convertible.

Now don't worry, you won't have to cool your heels all year waiting for Spring Fling 2001 next April. Chrysler Performance West puts on an annual stop-gap extravaganza called Fall Fling, this fifth presentation marked by the Roman numeral "V", on Saturday October 21. With an expected 300 cars and over 100 swap meet stands, this could be enough to get L.A a Mopar elite through the winter. (We can see the letters now: "Hey Dude, we don't have winter in L.A "-Ed.) For the whole scoop on Spring Fling 2001, or Fall Fling V, or Fling Fall Spring Ring Ding 8, check CPWs website at http://www.cpw club.com or phone their hotline at (818) 759-1779. These shows get bigger every year, but let's hope they never get so big as to prompt Yogi to declare, as he once did about legendary New York eatery Toots Shor's, "It's so crowded, nobody goes there anymore." *