Let me address the latter comment first. You are absolutely right, enjoy what we have before it's gone. All of this complaining about The Nats gets old. I started going in the late '80s. Yes, the show has changed but so has the entire hobby. For ME, The Nats was all about the drag racing and the Pro Street cars back then. I haven't watched one car go down the track in the last 10-15 years. But that's just me. I will say that I've been starting to look at drag cars and "hot rods" a lot more lately so maybe I'm starting to move to another stage of the "Mopar Cycle." The bottom line is, there are tons of cars, parts and people. It's all Mopar. So what's not to like about The Nats??

As far as how many cars are newer at Carlisle, boy am I glad you asked!!! I did an analysis on this back in 2016 (I believe) and I was quite surprised back then as I found many of the individual A,B & E-Body classes had hit an all-time high for turnout. I honestly hadn't had time to do another analysis since then but due to a lot of comments on Facebook and now this thread, I decided to take the time yesterday to run some numbers. Due to my reports, I was only able to go back to 2006, but that's almost 20 years. Here are the results:

- All of the late model Chargers, Challengers, 300s and Magnums only increased by 12 cars since last year. We went from 809 to 821.
- Out of the 3156 registered show vehicles this year, only 821 of them were modern muscle.
- Pre-1981 cars increased by 34 from 2022 to 2023.
- We had the most pre-1981 cars we've had from 2006-2023 (remember, I don't have comparable data prior to 2006 at this time, but I don't think it will be any higher than 2006 numbers).
- A, B & C-Bodies ALL increased from 2022 to 2023. E-Bodies dropped by ONE car.
- A, B & C-Body cars were all the highest ever from 2006-2023 (again, I don't currently have comparable data prior to 2006 at this time).

I was able to pull the TOTAL car count back to 2001 and the show grew every year with 1646 cars in 2001 and 2165 cars in 2006. Since the then new LC/LX cars had just come out, I think it's safe to say that the Chargers and Challengers were NOT contributing to the show back then so the classics had to be where the growth was coming from. In fact, here are the total numbers for LC/LX cars for 2004-2006:
-2004: 0
-2005: 49
-2006: 26 (I have no idea why they dropped by almost half that year)

The bottom line is, all of the growth and record numbers we are having are not just from the newer cars!! The older car classes are growing, too, except for E-Bodies. E-Bodies have dropped off slightly (we had 27 fewer E-Bodies this year than we had in 2006 and as noted above, they dropped by ONE car from 2022 to 2023). I personally think this is GREAT news for the hobby. Yes, we are seeing growth from the Modern Muscle Mopars, but we are seeing MORE growth from the A, B & C-Body Mopars.

I can't wait to use this DATA on Facebook the next time someone says that our record number of 3156 at Carlisle is all new Chargers and Challengers!!

Ed B