39th Annual Englishtown Raceway Park Fall Car Show
Englishtown, NJSaturday, September 25, 2021
Photos by: Ben Deutschman
The 39th annual Englishtown Car Show opened to bright sunny skies,
and as the day progressed it got quite warm in the direct sunlight.
The vehicle turnout was light first, but did pick up as the day
wore on, and the lighter than year’s past turnout has many factors driving,
including those in 50 and up crowd, who feel the adjacent Swap Meet isn’t
providing the plethora of restoration parts vendors they want to see, while
stubbornly ignoring that the Internet has largely replaced the Swap Meet as
a go to for those parts. I in fact ordered my nice new Hood Latch for my 1976
Trans Am Online, while sitting by my car. There also those who feel a need to
punish Raceway Park’s current owners for something I’m amazed took as
long as it did to happen, and that is the closure of the Racetrack. While I’m
not happy the Track closed, it was only a matter of time before the relentless
haranguing by the residents of the nearby housing developments built over
the years, pressures from NHRA to make improvements to the Track, without
any funding to help offset those costs, and a deal that made it easy for the
descendants of Vincent Napoliello and Louis Napoliello to make the decision
to close, finally resulted in the demise of the ¼ mile Racetrack. The joke
though now is on those residents who thought they’d won, only to realize
much too late, that the Copart Junk Car storage deal in the end, created a
bigger problem. Now instead of enduring the loud noises of racing a few
nights a week, and weekends from March to November, those residents now
have 24/7 Truck noise from Rigs hauling junk vehicles in and out of the part
of the Raceway Park property leased to Copart. Enjoy your victory folks
Click on any photo for slideshow