Date: Friday April 27th - Sunday April 29th 2001
Place: Kalamazoo Michigan
Event schedule:
Friday, April 27:
12-5pm: Welcoming day, Lane Automotive, I-94 at exit 41, Watervliet Mich. Free tours from 12-5pm, free hats, special surprises & more. We will have representatives on hand from Ford Racing, Vibrant Performance (
http://www.VibrantPower.com ) & others that we are still talking with, and of course the Lane Automotive showroom will be open for business as well! For those not familiar with Lane Automotive, be sure to visit their website at:
http://www.laneautomotive.com you will see that they're MUCH more than just a parts store!
5pm: Cruise to Roxy's in St. Joseph, MI. Roxy's is a '50 style cruise in diner that welcomes car clubs and cruise-ins on a regular basis. Expect this to become a full blown CEG/SHO car show before the night ends!
Saturday, April 28th:
Option 1: Dyno day, Baker Engineering
(
http://www.bakerengineeringinc.com ), 9am-4pm. Cost $35, but we can only offer 15 spots on a first come/first serve basis.( Dyno slots will be divided by car type to keep things fair. 5 SHO slots, 5 SVT Contour Slots, and 5 Non-SVT Contour Slots)
Option 2: Local tours with stops at the Gilmore Classic Car of America Museum & Kalamazoo Aviation History Museum. Cost is $5 for the Gilmore museum, $8 for the Aviation museum. We'll be visiting the Gilmore car museum first (which will be opening it's doors EXCLUSIVELY for Spring Zing attendees...this museum doesn't officially begin it's regular season until May 6th!) Car Collector magazine calls this museum "One of the ten best large automobile museums in the United States." Expect to spend a good 2-3 hours at this museum, which has approximately 140 vehicles on display from all categories, including an ultra-rare 1980 Kevlar Bodied BMW M-1, a 1948 Tucker, an 1899 Locomobile & much more! Next we will proceed to the Kalamazoo Aviation History Museum, where attendees can tour two hangers worth of aircraft. See the Air Zoo's flight ready 1929 Ford Tri-Motor and their assortment of impressive aircraft engines, from small six cylinders to massive WASP radial engines! The Air Zoo is also one of only three civilian museums in the WORLD which has an F-14 Tomcat on display!
Be sure to visit the Gilmore Classic Car of America Museum
online at
http://www.gilmorecarmuseum.org And also visit the Kalamazoo Air Zoo online at
http://www.airzoo.org After the day of touring (or dyno runs) we'll move next to the Spring Zing 2001 Banquet Saturday evening at the Clarion Hotel in Kalamazoo (the base for our weekend activities). A fine catered buffet awaits, as well as guest speakers, door prizes and more!
Sunday, April 29th:
The first 1st Annual "Spring Zing Cup", SCCA SOLO 2 autocross at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, with eight specific Contour & Taurus SHO categories! Those categories are:
89-95 Taurus SHO Stock
89-95 Taurus SHO Modified
96-99 Taurus SHO Stock
96-99 Taurus SHO Modified
95-00 Contour/Mystique Stock
95-00 Contour/Mystique Modified
98-00 SVT Stock
98-00 SVT Modified
Trophies will be awarded for winners in each class. Participants also wanting to run in normal SCCA classes can do so. Winners from each class will then advance to the final "Spring Zing Cup" run, with each class winner getting one final run. The person with the fastest time on that last run wins the Spring Zing Cup. Cost $20 to run, free to watch.
Everything listed above has been confirmed. However we are still working on many extras! We're still contacting & talking with aftermarket manufacturers/suppliers to be on hand for our welcoming day, showcasing products for SHO & Contour owners. We're also working with Ford Racing to bring some of their "specialty" vehicles to our welcoming day as well. And we also have some very special "surprises" that we simply can't
talk about (at the request of specific individuals) until Spring Zing. All we can say is that Spring Zing 2001 will be the debut for some very special "products" that we're positive all SHO & Contour enthusiasts will want to see.
There will also be plenty of extras for the weekend. We will have some very nice prizes to give away at the banquet. We'll have a "hospitality room" where we'll have both a 3.4 SHO V8 engine and a 3.0 SHO V-6 engine on display (much to the dismay of Clarion Hotel's management
. Convention goodie bags, attendee packets, available t-shirts, everything an enthusiast could want.
We've also designed Spring Zing so enthusiasts of most every budget can attend. All we require is a base convention fee of $30 per person. This is for the banquet & associated fees. The welcoming day at Lane Automotive is free, and the other events are all pay-on-site, allowing attendees to pick and choose which events they'd like to do. This base fee needs to be received no later than March 31st 2001. Payments can be sent to:
SZ2001
PO Box 911
Watervliet, MI
49098
Checks/money orders should be made out to Mark Rowe (SZ2001 Chairman). We cannot accept credit cards or cash.
As stated earlier, the Clarion Hotel in Kalamazoo will serve as the base location for the convention. We have reserved a block of rooms from Thursday April 26th through Monday April 30th. We have a special room rate of $59 per night + tax, with 1-4 people allowed per room. The Clarion is located at
3600 E. Cork Street, right off I-94 at exit 80. It is a top-notch facility, with elegant rooms & on-site dining facilities, indoor & outdoor pool, sauna, whirlpool and weight room. Reservations can be made by calling (616) 385-3922. Be sure to ask for the SVT/SHO Society Spring Zing rate!
This is the 3rd Spring Zing convention...the first two were nothing more than very small parking lot gatherings and were exclusive to Ford Contour owners. The SVT/SHO Society attended Spring Zing 2000 and the Taurus SHO owners who attended "unofficially" were very well received! Now that the Contour & SHO are both cars out of production it seemed natural to us to evolve Spring Zing into a national weekend convention where enthusiasts can celebrate these special vehicles. We know that Spring Zing has much to offer, and we humbly request your assistance to help make Spring Zing 2001 a weekend convention to remember. Anything you can do to help would be appreciated!
Any questions or concern may be directed to Mark Rowe at:
616-463-3354
GTExtreme1@aol.com
------------------
What do you see? Look Again. Do you see
Persaverance? Substance? Odds being trampled? Perspectives changing? Rules collapsing? Meaning? Look Again.
If all you see is a car...
Look Again
1998 SVT Contour.
Silver Frost
Mondeo Badges & Side Markers, KKM, OMP Cast Aluminum Pedals, Eibach Suspension, Flowmaster 40 Series Exhaust w/ 4-1/2" Stainless Steel Vibrant Tips (non-resonated single wall "Dragger Style" Tips), No resonator, Knauberized, B&M Pro Edge Shifter, Brembo Rotors, KVR Carbon Fibre pads and more...
SVT/SHO Society of West
Michigan SouthWest Rep.
GTExtreme1@aol.com
