Mighty Mopars & More at Crazy Helsinki Cruise Night
Classic car cruise in the Finish capital has enough American Muscle to rival most stateside meets. Long live Mopar!
Here’s a random question for you: What are the first things that pop into your head when you think about Finland? For us, it was pickled fish, rally drivers, and snow. And to be fair? Preserved herring is popular fare, the country is second only to France in having produced World Rally champs, and winters are brutal. So we didn’t do too bad. But after watching this video from YouTube’s Jamboolio, we’re going to add classic American Mopar iron to that admittedly short list — because it looks like capital city Helsinki has a fantastic car scene.
Now, the video uploaded earlier this month is over 20 minutes long, and while there’s zero narration, there’s also very little repetition, and no distracting music. We have to admit we were a little surprised at the turnout here, as a quick search determined that gas is pushing $6 a gallon. Since virtually everything you’ll see in these frames has a Charles Bukowski-grade drinking problem, we’d bet few of these babies see service as daily drivers.
As we’ve mentioned there’s loads of hot hardware on display here, but the host of the channel seems most stoked about ’73 Dodge Charger SE, as he specifically mentions it in the title of the video, and spends more time on it than any other car. The reason for that, obviously, is that this baby is absolutely wicked.
With the massive, 605-cubic-inch Hemi under the hood, it epitomizes the no-replacement-for-displacement theme of the event, and the murdered-out paint scheme makes it even more menacing. This is a machine that would turn heads on any street in the States, so we can’t imagine the reaction the owner gets up near the arctic circle.
Given just how many vehicles are shot in this video, getting screenshots of everything we were into proved pretty tough. But we took our time to make sure we got a good one of the Plum Crazy Hemi ‘Cuda, as it’s such a rare bird.
Since we’re into off-beat stuff, we loved the classic Plymouth copy Mopar, and can only imagine the crazy trip it took to wind up in Helsinki. The primer-gray Jeep Cherokee looked awesome too, and might be one of the few vehicles seen here that doesn’t get stowed when the snow starts to fall.
Along with all the mighty Mopar legends, there were plenty of other domestic machines present, including a sweet purple second-gen Z/28, a fourth-gen F-Body, and an awesome 1950s-era Cadillac hearse that looks approximately six miles long. That said, if we have one complaint about this video, it’s that we’d love more shots of the surrounding area, so we could see how the American stuff looks against the city’s more mundane vehicles.
Living in the United States, it’s easy to take the muscle cars scene for granted. Regardless of where you live, it’s never hard to find a local show and shine packed with the kind of machines in this video. So it’s beyond cool to see them cruising these foreign streets, and bringing a taste of American hot rod culture to northern Europe!
We’re pretty smitten with the baby blue Charger R/T, but picking an overall favorite is tough. Which is your favorite car in this video? Head into the forums and let us know!
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