Friday night car meets always seem to end the same way. Gearheads amped up on Monster start revving their engines to redline, blasting their stereos and doing smoky donuts. But the organizers of the Christmas Car Meet got everyone on the road for a cruise into the city.
A parade of fully-lit vehicles left Ashbridges Bay park and headed north to Queen St. Only half of the cars even made it through that first red light, so the parade got broken up into smaller groups. It’s common for gearheads to put fake Japanese license plates on at shows, and some guys left them on to fool the ‘Big Brother’ cameras as they blew through red lights.
Drivers who got separated just had to follow the sound of engines revving and horns honking up ahead.
Remarkably, police just ignored the cars covered in ‘distracting lights’ and focused their efforts on actual criminal behaviour downtown. Some cops even gave thumbs up to the cars!
Cruising up Yonge St the parade made a loop around Dundas Sq before street parking across from the Eaton Centre. It’s actually really hard to park 25+ cars together downtown!
After blocking a lane of Dundas St for a couple minutes, the Christmas Car Cruise continued down University Ave to Bremner Blvd which is where Toronto’s iconic CN Tower and SkyDone are located. Plenty of space to park the cars and do some night photography. Tourists wandering around downtown clapped their approval and cheered Merry Christmas to the motorists. It was a special evening.
Some incorrigibles decided to jump on the highway and head to the airport strip for illegal street racing, while others were just glad to not get pulled over for something as silly as Christmas lights on their cars, and headed home.
Kudos to the coppers for having some Xmas spirit. Now off to watch the night drive video.
Mu co-pilot actually spotted a cop giving us the ‘thumbs up’ during our downtown drive. Cool!
What? Cops focused their efforts on criminal activity? What’s this world coming to? Looks like it was a fun and colorful event. I take it you didn’t go to the airstrip to race.
I think there’s been so many news stories out of Anytown, USA about Office Grinch ticketing some guy with Christmas lights on his car, that the Toronto Police just said “forget it”…. unless you’re doing burnouts, they’re laving the festive gearheads alone.
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Even though my GMC has a 5.2L V8 engine, it is still a big heavy truck. No point in racing it. Except that one time…
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https://demaras.com/2024/09/14/professional-grade-race-track-dryer/
Youe one time Pro Grad Black Magic race was a good time. There are so many big engine pickup trucks around here. But the are heavy. They make more noise than speed compared to our Masdaspeed 3.
First things first, Mazdaspeed 3 is a great car. Very jealous / happy for you.
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Up here in the great white north, everyone drives those stupid SUVs. Pickup trucks are a distant second. But for ‘real men’ like me who actually have to tow things, it’s a must.
We have plenty of stupid SUVs ,also. I have a 1982 Ford F100 pickup truck. Old but it does what I need.
And I bet it looks tiny next to even a regular old F150 from the past decade, right?