Subaru

College kids refer to it as the “the start of the weekend”. You probably know it better as Thursday night. Often overshadowed by the likes of Friday and Saturday, Thursday nights are often wasted in vain and not enjoyed to their fullest extent. That philosophy shall be no more. It is now my firm opinion that Thursday nights are heavily underrated.  Especially when there are things like Night Import’s "Collaboration" Meet going down.

I was unable to attend NI’s first meet, so I made sure I could come out for owner William Lee’s second gathering. Titled “Collaboration” to encourage all cars of all styles and philosophies to get together, the meet served as a representation of all the hard work Mr. Lee has put into Night Import to get it to where it is today. Proper respect. Now let’s see what Collaboration was all about…

There’s nothing like a good rivalry to get a lively debate going. However, allegiances are seldom swapped, regardless of how compelling the arguments that are made may be. Fans of X don’t like Y or its fans, and vice versa.

Two areas in which this is eminently evident are cars and sports. Most guys (and a good many gals) have their favorite automakers and their favorite teams. Rare is the devotee of one that gets along with the devotee of another, and in many cases the companies and teams themselves can’t stand each other. So in honor of that big rugby match (or whatever the hell it is) taking place in Indianapolis this Sunday, we’ve cooked up the following list of what we feel are the 10 fiercest rivalries in the motoring world. Some are between individual models, and others are between entire marques, but all defy neutrality.

From 1943 to 1999, El Toro served as a Marine Corp Air Station. It was at one time, the largest Marine air base on the West Coast. Now known as the Orange County Great Park, El Toro is used for a variety of purposes. Much to our liking, many of them are automotive related. The base's runways have been used for everything from filming of car commercials to automotive OEM prototype testing to Top Gear USA's test track. We've attended a few product demonstrations at the base in the past, and even broke the 160 mph barrier in a prototype car on one occasion.

But this past Sunday, most of the action took place in another part of the base. One of its large parking areas was home to this year's Automotive Connection show, or AutoCon. We already provided a sampling of the beautiful models at the show. And now we'll attempt to give you a taste of the other beauties at this event. We spent close to 10 hours at AutoCon 2011 and still weren't able to fully take in all of the amazing cars at this year's show. Take a look past the break to see some of our favorites (like the S14 above), as well as our photo gallery from the event.