It may not be Thursday but we’re effectively having a throwback post with how long ago these photos were taken. Regardless of their age (about 3 months in case you were wondering) I still wanted to share them and I’m hoping that you all still enjoy them – in any case it was a very fun night for all of us so if nothing else, now we can have something to look back on when we wish to.
On to the night in question – this answered for us the question of how well a meet could be organized with two days’ notice; the answer was ‘fairly well’ and by throwing in a bit of improvisation it became even better. This was our small 3/20 meet on April 20th (I think they’ll be called the Twentieth meets or something instead from now on. That’s to be decided…) which happened to line up with Advantage Ford’s official Grand Re-Opening following their extensive renovations. This was something which I had also wanted to attend and fortunately it started a couple of hours earlier than our meet, so I decided to leave my house early, head over to Advantage, and then go to the meet. Given that Advantage had been such a help with Mustard I wanted to at least stop by and say hi, and there was the lure of some reportedly special cars on site too.
Upon arriving I was blown away by the sheer number of people in attendance. Parking was at an absolute premium and the lot got to be like a real-life version of the Rush Hour board game. Myself and others had to resort to parking in the aisles in front of (that is, blocking) vehicles in the dealership’s inventory, since they wouldn’t have to move; otherwise we’d have been completely out of luck.
Hunting for parking was worth it though, as even before getting inside there was plenty to admire.
After I made my way inside I found a spot in the crowd to listen to the speech. I didn’t take any photos during it, but once it wrapped up the camera came back out as I wandered over to the service mall to see what they had on display.
It was hard to ignore so naturally the GT was the first one I checked out; I really cannot wait to see a new GT in person if/when one ever arrives in town.
An easter egg hidden in the GT – the number ‘100’ is designed into the headlight. Not so interesting perhaps is that the passenger headlight contains ‘001’. Haha
Across from the GT was something fairly far removed from the mid-2000s super car.
No information was present for any of the vehicles so I unfortunately can’t really share much on it, but it certainly worked well to illustrate the progression and evolution in vehicles over the decades.
Another that I can’t really offer much on was this classic Mercury pickup.
Outside, meanwhile, happened to be a customer’s RS which seemed to be sporting a few small upgrades. Spy the Mountune decal on the side skirt…
It was then time for me to get on the road to head over to the A&W but something suddenly occurred to me. Seeing that Advantage had some cool cars on display for the Re-Opening, and that a lot of room had cleared up both inside (it had been shoulder-to-shoulder) and in the parking lot, the lightbulb suddenly lit up. Given that the majority of the attendees of our small gathering would likely be Ford owners I figured I’d run the idea by everyone of meeting for a bit at Glendeer as planned, and then cruising over to Advantage for the last hour of their event. Everyone liked the idea so that is what ended up happening…
…but before I get too far ahead of myself, I should get into the photos from the mini-meet itself. As mentioned this was at Glendeer Circle (specifically the A&W) as it’s a good location and having food and drink present is always welcome – plus it’s always good to show as much support as possible for that A&W given all they do for and with the car community.
Like I had mentioned at the start this was extremely short notice – and also had minimal advertisement. We had no sense of how many cars would show up but a decent little turnout did indeed result!
It wasn’t all Fords either – a few others arrived including this 350Z in my favourite colour for the chassis. I remember when these first came out (holy that was a while ago now) and immediately being taken by this shade.
Joe had his FR-S, sitting on ZE40s. These are definitely the new TE37s, in that they look good on everything.
Teddy had his Mustang and Yolanda her ST, naturally.
One treat for us that evening was the chance to get a sneak-peek at Danny’s Ruckus. Remember when these photos were taken – this was just as Driven was approaching and this little thing, like many projects around the city, was just being finished up in anticipation for the big day so it hadn’t officially been revealed yet.
I had been waiting to see it up close so I took the chance to look over some of the details and custom touches, of which there were many.
Back to the cars, Andrew came out with his Mk1 following the recent fitting of a supercharger! A boosted Focus sitting on Tarmacs…
…I like Andrew’s style. Haha
Obligatory extra fifteen52 content.
Everyone was having a good time catching up and hanging out, and then as the evening went on a few started to leave. Danny was getting ready to do so here too – and may or may not have been seeing if the scooter could do a burnout. I guess you could say he was trying to cause a Ruckus? Okay, I’ll stop now.
At that point we decided we should hit the road so as to make it to Advantage with enough time to enjoy the end of their celebration, and so that’s what we did. The cruise was fun – save for an uber-slow Volvo that split us up – and it was cool to all roll in to the lot together with our modified Fords (and one Evo).
I think it was safe to say that everyone was immediately pleased with the decision to cruise over, and they hadn’t even seen the GT yet.
Speaking of, once inside we went straight for it, because there was no way a bunch of Ford owners wouldn’t go and look at it immediately. When I had told them that there was a GT in the service mall though, I think some may have assumed I meant the new GT…oops. But hey, a Mk2 isn’t exactly bad, is it? (The answer is no!)
Brian and Andrew doing their best to mess with my photo…though I snapped it before Andrew managed to get fully into position so do I win? Incidentally, this GT350 was the only car left in the showroom as the rest had been taken out to make room for the tables and guests.
Hanging in the showroom was this photo from their original opening back in 1995. I was happy to see a kilt – proud Scotsman here!
As the celebration wrapped up we wandered back to our cars – it was quickly getting dark but we did our best to grab a few quick group shots before parting ways.
Andrew also pulled his car around to the front doors for a couple more photos with which to end the night – and they will end this post. He really wanted a shot of the Mk1 between the RS and GT350 so we guided him to be centered between the two. It would have been fun to have it literally between them but we figured driving up on Advantage’s red carpet wouldn’t have been the best idea. Haha
And that’s that! Thanks for reading everyone, and come back on Wednesday for the next post!
-Bill