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Rodney Phillips with wife Belinda and daughter Breanna, and their 1955 Vauxhall Velox. Pictures: GRAHAM TIDY
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Retro V8 pickup power at the vehicle scrutineering at EPIC.
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The annual drive through the streets of Canberra kicks off the four-day Summernats 2013.
The Summernats streetcar festival is off to a rolling start, with some not exactly street-legal V8s headlining Canberra’s only motorcade without “an overpaid politician in it”.
More than 200 street machines and custom cars meandered through Canberra streets into Northbourne Avenue at midday yesterday in front of thousands of spectators.
The annual cruise kicked off Summernats 2013, expected to attract about 90,000 people to the EPIC showgrounds over the next four days.
Festival co-owner Andy Lopez says this year’s Citycruise has been expanded to include a limited number of non-street-legal cars.
“We’ve got about 20 to 25 cars that are travelling under an unregistered vehicle permit,” he said.
“And basically they’re cars that have got the big blocks or engines that are overly noisy that you can’t normally drive on the roads.”
As a result, the motorcade blocked off city traffic for 30 minutes and required a police escort.
“This is the only serious motorcade that happens in Australia that hasn’t got an overpaid politician in it,” Mr Lopez said.
With Summernats 2013 registering more cars than ever before, Mr Lopez predicted a big year for the 26-year-old festival.
“We’ve gone from 1500 entrants at Summernats 25, up to over 1700 this year, which is a fantastic vote of confidence from the street machine community about the event,” he said.
The next big spectacle on the Summernats calendar will be the Guinness World Record attempt for the most cars involved in a simultaneous burnout, which will take place at the EPIC showgrounds at 11am on Friday. AAP
From www.illawarramercury.com.au