The IASCA Finals

By Michael Cajayon

Photography by Heather Selwitz

For the last several months, competitors have traveled miles upon miles, weekend after weekend, to garner points for the IASCA Finals. Hours of tweaking time and late nights at the shop all came down to one weekend. On October 27-29th, it was time to put up or shut up. There was about 450 total competitors invited to the Finals and approximately 200 showed up (189 for Sound Quality and 89 for IDBL). On this weekend, the best cars on the planet met at the Myriad Center in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, the site of the 12th annual IASCA Finals. The last three out of four years, the Finals were held on the East Coast in Greenville, South Carolina.

This location made it difficult for competitors west of the Mississippi to attend. The idea here was to bring the Finals back to middle America in hopes of attracting more competitors nationwide. The move proved to be a successful one as competitors all over the nation, Canada, and Japan showed up ready to battle. The location was excellent because it also provided lots of nightlife in nearby "Bricktown." After all was said and done, there were many surprises and some familiar faces standing tall at the awards ceremony.

The Novice winners were Nathan Pool, Michael S. Coiner, Corey Murach and Dennis Tate Jr. in the 1-150, 151-300, 301-600, and 601+ categories. The highly competitive Amateur division crowned Michael Galligan, Neal Batson, Robert C. Hillgaertner Jr., and Joe Johnson as the best in the division. In the Pro 1-150 category, Tim Woolstin of Lawrenceville, Georgia defeated long time champion Frank Rougeau (third place). Chris Phlordis of Reading, Massachusetts, a 1995 Finals champion once again took home top honors in the 151-300 category. Mickey Brones of Bridge City, Texas didn't have too far to travel to win the 301-600 category. Finally, in the 601+ category, Masahiro Yoshioka came all the way from Japan and edged out defending champion, Robert Rice to really make this event an International Finals. In the Expert class, Mark Liggett of Team Pioneer and Mark Eldridge from the Kicker camp won in the 1-600 and 601+ categories, respectively.

Consumers were greeted with over 50 mobile electronic vendors showing off their latest wares. Kicker had one of the largest booths with Alma Gates showing off her famous Ford Bronco, now fully equipped with Kicker components. Kicker even had a big screen TV to keep everyone updated on all the college and pro football games. JBL (who sponsors the TREK racing team) added a twist to the event by setting up a mountain bike stunt course. Here, through the course of the weekend, Trek Volkswagen stunt rider extraordinaire, Anthony "Pogi" Tortorice wowed the crowd with some unbelievable stunts. Alpine Electronics unveiled the long awaited predecessor to the 7909. The Alpine CDA-7990 features more power, an outboard DC-DC converter, the most accurate CD mechanism, larger RCA cables, a blacked out copper plated chassis and, of course, the traditional Alpine look. In JL Audio's booth, consumers were treated to their award winning Trans AM. Sunday afternoon brought the traditional bikini contest. Everyone was showered with giveaways from numerous manufacturers. And what show would be complete without Dave "Fishman" Rivera who brought two of his latest creations, displayed in the Jensen and Lanzar booths. All in all, IASCA has once again proven themselves in creating a most successful Finals. With the success in Oklahoma this year, don't rule out the possibility that this will be the spot for next years Finals.