October. School is back in session and everyone is gearing up to pile on the pounds and a little debt during the holiday season. But, it's also that magical time of year when the baddest LS-powered cars from around the country converge on Lucas Oil Raceway in Indianapolis for the Chevrolet Performance LSX Shootout. Now in its sixth year, this has become the must-attend event for LS-equipped cars. Additionally, this race incorporates NMCA's FueLab World Street Finals, open to anyone with an itch to toss their ride down the 1320.

If you're a Chevrolet Camaro lover and want to see some cool rides, head to Chatsworth, CA, this June. The California Car Cover Co. has just announced the details for its 2nd annual Camaro Car Show being held at its facility in sunny, Southern California.

This is your chance to have fun and sharpen your skills with Pro Touring and Street Cars at one of the best racing facilities in the country. The Heidts Performance Car Challenge returns May 11-12, 2013 to the Autobahn Motorsport Country Club in Joliet, Illinois hosted by the American Street Car Series staff.

The Chevy High Performance Nationals is the largest all-GM event of the year featuring a huge car show, bracket and True Street racing, LSX racing, a special autocross presented by JET-HOT and Wilwood Brakes, a world-class all-GM manufacturers' midway, a giant used parts swap meet, 300+ mph jet cars, and much more.

Show ponies are yesterday's old news. These days, driving events are what's hip, and companies that churn out go-fast goodies are really diggin' the trend. One such company is Lingenfelter Performance. To give their customers a chance to blow off steam, and melt some tires, they decided to host the Lingenfelter Performance Nationals. Held at Summit Motorsports Park, near Norwalk, Ohio, it had something for everyone. For the 1320 crowd there was smokin' hot drag racing action, and for the rest there was a challenging autocross course, car show, and a cruise though the countryside. This was also the last chance for someone to qualify for Optima Battery's Ultimate Street Car Invitational, so a lot was at stake.

The American Streetcar Series will once again be invading South Carolina and the 2.3-mile road course at Carolina Motorsports Park for Detroit Speed "Southern Slam" in Kershaw, South Carolina April 20th - April 21st. This will be an Optima Batteries Ultimate Street Car Qualifier for the season-ending event November 9th that pits the top street cars from across the country against each other in Pahrump, Nevada following the SEMA show.

Once a mere pipe dream thought up by a group of gearheads who happen to work at Holley, the aftermarket automotive company best known for carburetors, nitrous systems, and now electronic fuel injection, the idea of the Holley LS Fest has not only morphed into reality, but is now recognized as the most exciting muscle car event of the year for enthusiasts running LS power between the ’rails of their muscle car.

The key to this gig is making lemonade out of lemons. Our sister publication asked us to help out with a new event they put on called the Chevy High Performance Nationals in Atlanta. Since we knew the guys over at CHP throw a heck of a party, we were happy to lend a hand, and a lens, to the cause. Once we saw all the tasty Camaros in attendance, we also decided to snap a few pictures for our own pages.

It’s springtime and even though Southern California really doesn’t have a winter (compared to the rest of the country, anyway), we still look forward to this time of year because it’s the start of the summer competition driving season. Sure, there are car shows, but we would rather optimize tire pressures than rub our cars with microfiber towels. The main problem for us West Coasters is that many of the super-cool driving events are too far east, making them geographically undesirable to attend. Luckily, a group of Tennessee gearheads took pity on us and organized the inaugural Run to the Coast event in 2010. It combined a full-blown road course, autocross, and speed-stop competition into two days and guaranteed to satiate the needs of those wanting to haul ass in their hot rods.

Trailer queen, show car, poseur−all derogatory terms placed on any car that’s “too nice.” Sure, these terms are usually bantered about by guys that don’t even have running cars, but the stigma associated with these labels still strikes a painful cord in any hot rodder. Take Pro-Touring cars for example. For a while it looked like they were going to flounder down the same tragic path that Pro-Street did back in the late 80s and 90s.

If you are a fan of super-rare Camaro muscle cars, you often need to search far and wide to view the truly spectacular: the COPOs, the ZL1s, the supercars, and the big-point restored models. However, if you got the memo, the place to be was the Donald E. Stephens Convention Center in Rosemont, Illinois (just a few minutes from O’Hare Airport in Chicago), for the big MCACN (Muscle Car and Corvette Nationals) event. Held on the third weekend in November, this has become the most important show of the year for the blue jean millionaires of the car hobby, as well as enthusiasts who already know they will always be shocked by what shows up for the two-day temporary 500-plus car museum.

Three years ago the gearheads at Optima Batteries had the idea to gather up some of the sweetest high-performance muscle cars at SEMA, sprinkle in some modern performance icons, and let them all battle it out on the track. The result became the Optima Ultimate Street Car Invitational (OUSCI). Since then the rules have been tweaked but the soul of the event has remained true: bitchin rides that look like they can haul ass are put to the ultimate test of car and driver. There are three ways to get a “golden ticket” to run at this party: win one of the regional qualifying events, get noticed during the year by the event organizers, or snag one of the 10 invites handed out at the SEMA show in Las Vegas. No matter how you get there, you’ll soon find out that being fast is a hell of a lot harder than looking fast.

To some, October might be the kickoff to the holiday season, but to racers, especially those with LS power under the hood, it’s most notable for the biggest, baddest LS drag racing event of the year. Now in its fifth year, the NMCA LSX Shootout has moved to Lucas Oil Raceway in Indianapolis, Indiana. In addition to all of the LS-powered tire-smokin’ action, the event also incorporates NMCA’s FueLab World Street Finals that’s open to any car ready to throw down in the quarter-mile.

Overall, the state of Nebraska is a pretty quiet place. In fact, it’s where people from Kansas go to “get away from it all.” But in the town of Arnold, it’s far from peaceful when the annual Sandhills Open Road Challenge (SORC) takes place. Since 2001, this yearly festival of petrol-fueled mayhem has turned narrow ribbon roads and cornfields into one of the coolest racing venues we’ve come across. In the first year, 34 drivers showed up for the party, but today the grid of 120 spots sells out in just a few days. Why? Because its mix of Americana and automotive culture is unique and very addictive.

It was September 2010 when the folks at Holley made their presence more widely known in the LS world by dreaming up the inaugural Holley LS Fest held in their home digs of Bowling Green, Kentucky, at nearby Beech Bend Raceway Park. The first-time event was a huge success, and with extensive media coverage, good old-fashioned word of mouth, and new-school social media accounts buzzing, the momentum carried over into the Second Annual Holley LS Fest.

The NFL has the Superbowl, MLB has the World Series, NASCAR has the Daytona 500, and the NHRA has the U.S. Nationals. All these high-profile media events feature the pinnacle of competition and the best of the best with the largest prize awaiting the winner—be it the size of the trophy or amount of the purse—it’s big! On that same line of superiority, the Goodguys Rod and Custom Association takes their traveling hot rod road show to Columbus, Ohio, every July for their “super” event of the year: The PPG Goodguys Nationals. Not only is it the largest event as far as attendance and entries go, but it’s also the show in which many of the top muscle car and street rod builders in the country bring out their top-notch examples to compete for the Goodguys’ most prestigious awards: Street Machine of the Year and Street Rod of the Year.

With roots from the Cannonball Sea-to-Shining-Sea Trophy Dashes in the '70s, Brock Yates, Jr.'s Tire Rack One Lap of America is a weeklong race fest separated by butt-numbing highway jaunts covering some of America's coolest countryside. If you have any octane in your veins, it's a "must-do," so when James Shipka offered me a co-drive, who was I to say no? Teaming with James also meant I'd co-drive his '67 OneLapCamaro that has oodles of performance bits that can easily take a weeklong pounding track after track. Both car and owner have done One Lap while I, a "lap puppy," had not. Could I be a hero for a week? You betcha, as I had the creds with my two high-performance driving schools plus drive-on transits. The Camaro was safe and could go the distance. We had "The Coffin," a cigar-shaped trailer that held the following: two tires, plastic bins filled with parts, hydraulic jack and stands, 12-volt air compressor, tire gauge, electrical kit, helmets and gloves, fire suits, Piloti's for me, Simpson's for James, rain gear, blankets, a six-drawer toolbox filled with hand tools, spare diff and fluid, engine fluids, air and oil filters, ten gallons of fuel, a spare trailer tire, blocks of wood, "road food," and ten pounds of loose change for toll booths. This was easy as all we had to do each day was unhitch the trailer, disgorge luggage from the trunk, don fire suit and related gear, and go race!

A Barrett-Jackson auction is like a circus for those bitten by the automotive bug. And while their Scottsdale auction is the most known, they’ve also been successful with events in Palm Beach, Las Vegas, and most recently, Orange County, California.

The fifth-generation Camaro has only been around for a couple of years, but it has already developed a huge following of modern muscle car fans. In that short period of time, Camaro5.com has managed to enlist over 45,000 members to its forum board who all share a common love of GM’s newest iteration of the iconic classic.

This past winter, GM Performance Parts announced the LSX Challenge Series consisting of four events that feature five exciting classes. In other words, they challenged every LS-powered vehicle owner to bring their car or truck to one of its events in 2011 for fun, camaraderie, and cash. Camaro Performers magazine quickly jumped onboard as the 5th-Gen Camaro Challenge class sponsor. The 5th-Gen Camaro Challenge is an index-based category in which competitors select an index from a list of 12 that vary in ½-second increments from 14.00 down to 8.50. The class calls for ’10-to-present Camaros that feature an LS or LLT (V-6) engine, OEM transmission, EFI, stock appearance, and all NHRA/NMCA safety equipment for the potential track performances. Qualifying rounds are spent as practice runs so you can determine an index for Sunday’s eliminations. On Sunday, competitors are randomly paired for the first round and then put on a ladder for round two, which is based on how close they run to the index selected.

The weather starts getting drier, the temps creep up, but it’s not really spring until a Goodguys event kicks off the car show season in Southern California. Yep, it’s that time of the year again, and even though SoCal winters don’t involve snow blowers or ice scrapers, we still get excited about spring just like the rest of the country.

We’re constantly surprised at how fast time flies. It’s seems like it was only a few months ago that we were attending the inaugural Run to the Coast event here in sunny Southern California, and all of a sudden it was time to do it again. Like last year, this orgy of muscle car mayhem was organized by a group of gearheads from back East. Bill Howell, Yancy Johns, and Danny Thomas worked their collective butts off so that us Left Coasters could enjoy a kick-ass event like the ones that have become almost commonplace east of the Rockies. In the keeping with the theme of “more is better,” this year’s run promised to be bigger and cooler than ever.