It’s puzzling how some places are welcoming to car meets, while other spots get blown up. For example, it’s been a year since the Toronto suburb of Vaughan ‘banned’ car meets thanks to its goofball mayor Del Duca. On the other hand, the west end suburb of Mississauga doesn’t seem to mind the weekly meets on Financial Dr, across the street from their Regional Police Headquarters.
Event organizer Phantom Meets GTA planned out a Friday night ‘park and chill’ with a bunch of car clubs. As always, the rules are no revving, no burnouts and no 2-step. Fairly certain that all three activities would occur and result in the meet getting shut down, we arrived early.
Amongst the Subaru and Toyota tuner-cars were muscle cars like the Chevy Nova, lifted Ford F-150 pickup trucks, plus a slammed and blacked-out GMC Suburban from the ’70s. In the corner of the parking lot was a massive Mustang group spanning all generations. Despite the Mustang’s reputation at cars and coffee type events, those guys weren’t the trouble-makers people expected them to be; dudes just hung around quarter mile stories.
Some of the rides at the Phantom Meets MEGA MEET were serious high-dollar machines. Even a customized pickup like that monster above would exceed six figures. Considering the rarity of rust-free muscle cars from the ’70s, their cost is skyrocketing. Some of these vintage vehicles are so polished, so pristine, that they hardly get driven any more, forget modifying them. They’re like museum pieces.
The tuner cars are not nearly as valuable and therefore encourage customization, since there’s no need to maintain originality of such common cars. The result is unique vehicles like a body-kitted Honda CRX with Lambo doors, and a Mitsubishi Lancer with a racing livery and huge wing. These tuner cars are the modern day equivalent of hot rods from the ’50s. Decade-old used cars that were originally sold in big numbers, so the junk yards are full of replacement parts.
By midnight, the crowd had thinned, and those cars left started revving engines and two-stepping to make flames shoot out their tailpipes. Basic hooligan behavior that ends up getting the meet shut down. One of the local car clubs decided to go for a high-speed run across Hwy 407 to am impromptu photoshoot.
Apparently the neon BOWLERO sign in Brampton is well known to people living in the west end. The shoot was delayed until the bowling alley closed, but luckily the manager left the lights on and even brought his motorbike out front to join the shoot.
