GM Day at the Museum of Transportation

by Justin Hughes

The Museum of Transportation in Brookline, MA has numerous car shows and concours events on their lawn throughout the year.  Some are private club events, while others are official museum events.  I found out about GM Day while attending a show earlier in the year. Although I expected pretty much the entire show to be made up of antiques and classic muscle cars, I knew that Saturns are GMs, too.  So I dropped an e-mail to the museum and asked if we could display some Saturns at the show.  We were welcomed with open arms, and put in touch with the Pontiac Club, which was running the event this year.  Meanwhile, I posted the event on the Saturn e-mail lists, and a few locals were interested in showing up.  Three of us made it, and a fourth would have shown his car except it was totaled by a semi a couple of weeks before.  Don't worry, the driver walked away from the crash - gotta love Saturn safety!

Local autocrosser Cris Thomas showed up with his 95 SC2 (a very good choice, I might add!)  His car was in full autocross configuration, complete with all the decals, numbers, and class lettering.  His is by far the most modified out of the three of us. Having just ran in the SCCA autocross the day before, he'd done nothing more than wipe down his car real quick to prepare for the show.
On the opposite extreme was Matt Shoop's 99 SC2, though that would not have been the case had his SL2 been running.  Normally bone stock, Matt transplanted his Powerstack intake for the show, and wore his 17" rims that look much better on this car than his SL2.  He washed his car the day before and cleaned up the wheels and tires, but nothing more.
And, of course, there was me with my 95 SC2.  I'd spent much of the previous day at Matt's getting it into shape. That meant a complete wash, including removing the bra and cleaning it separately as well as underneath it, and the three step wax job.  By the time it was done my arms were real tired!  But it was well worth it, and Locutus had never looked so good.  Matt loaned me his MSD spark plug wires, since they looked better than my stock ones and my Magnecors hadn't arrived yet.

Upon arriving, the coordinator from the Pontiac club told us that he'd made up an extra set of trophies based on a number of groups that had told him they'd show up, but didn't.  So since we showed up, he created a separate Saturn class for us!  Three people, and three trophies.  All of us would be going home with something!  The question was who got what?  That would be determined by the voters.  Unlike a concours, there were no official judges inspecting the car for perfection in cleanliness, dinging off points for every molecule of dirt they find.  Participants and spectators got to vote for their three favorite cars in five out of the eight classes.  I predicted that Cris would win, since he had the race car.  He thought Matt would win, having the cleanest looking of the three.  Matt chose not to speculate.

Other entries

Like I said, we were three out of something like 150 cars there that day.  This pic shows only a fraction of the cars that were there.  We're parked somewhere in the back, and you can't even see the rows of cars on the other side of the driveway from us.  We were actually right in the middle of all the action!  Since this was run by the Pontiac club, there were lots of Pontiacs.  I'd never seen so many GTOs in one place before.  There were quite a few Buicks, and a whole line of black Cadillacs. 

There was a lot of Chevy representation, too. This Stingray caught my eye, as well as Matt's. (It was actually in the Corvette class, separate from the other Chevorlets.) Very sweet car.  The owner checked out our cars later in the day.  It was then that I realized that the owner was Bill, who I had worked with at an old job several years ago!  Small world.  What's even funnier is that I met up with him at another car show a couple of years ago, when we had brought my wife's 1971 Nova.

And I have to mention this very unusual Oldsmobile that parked next to us. It looks to be an Olds Alero, with Cragar rims and oversized tires.  Whoop de do.  But take a look under the hood.  That's not a transverse mounted 4 or 6 cylinder.  That's a Chevy 454 V8, driving the rear wheels!!!  The body is from a 1999 Alero.  It was heavily modified, and then put onto a Chevy S-10 frame to handle the rear drive and larger engine.  There is no back seat - the floor of the car goes up and over the rear drivetrain, which the Alero was never intended to have.  It's quite a trip!  The owner told us that he considered doing the same conversion on a Saturn, though he'd go about it a different way.  But with the Alero complete, he's looking for a new project for this winter.  Maybe we inspired him...?

As is the case with all of the other automotive events I've entered with the Saturn, not one person had a negative thing to say about our Saturns.  Everyone was genuinely interested in our cars and what we'd done to them.  Most of the GM hot rodders knew family or friends who have a Saturn.  And many of them looked at us as representatives of the "next generation" of hot rodders.  Though our cars may have half as many cylinders and put the drive wheels on the wrong end of the car, we're souping them up, racing them, and having fun.  And that's what's really important.

The results

None of us went there to win a trophy, but since they so kindly created a class for us and there were only three entries, we were all guaranteed a trophy.  And we saw people scribbling notes on pieces of paper near our cars, so we knew that at least someone was voting on us.  At the end of the day, we gathered for the awards, and the winners were announced. I took third place in the Saturn class, and here's my award for it.  Matt took second, and Cris won the class.  Nobody can resist a race car!  

Thanks to the Museum of Transportation and the Pontiac Club for being so welcoming and friendly.  I'm hoping we can return to GM Day next year and at least double our numbers.  The funny thing is, both Cris and Matt each own two Saturns, and we all know other people who have them, so that really isn't a tall order!