California’s biggest car show gets bigger
The longest-running indoor car show in the world, and the biggest car show in California, returns to the Fairplex fairgrounds in Pomona for its 68th annual gathering.
The show, which runs Friday to Sunday, features seven exhibition halls filled with 650 roadsters, hot rods, custom cars, pin-striped low riders, vintage race cars and other examples of automotive art.
An additional 1,000 vehicles will arrive over the weekend to participate in a drive-in event.
Thirteen custom cars will compete for the “America’s Most Beautiful Roadster” award, vying for a 9-foot-tall trophy and $10,000 in prize money. Past winners include highly regarded builders Boyd Coddington, Blackie Gejeian, Chip Foose and George Barris.
The other 600 cars will compete for an additional 400 awards. But participants setting up for the show Thursday said the prizes aren’t the point.
“It’s passion,” said show owner John Buck. “These people are passionate about their cars. This is for love.”
It’s not about the prize money. Many of the custom cars on display cost more than $1 million to design, build, customize and paint, Buck said.
Builders ship their one-off creations to the show to bring attention to their custom shops and to support the deep-pocketed owners for whom they build the custom hot rods.
“We like to show the cars for the owners,” said builder Troy Ladd of Hollywood Hot Rods. His custom-created 1936 Packard roadster — a deep red masterpiece powered by a Lincoln V-12 race engine and said to be worth more than $1 million — is among the 13 vying for the AMBR prize.
Several of Ladd’s previous creations also competed for the AMBR, but did not win.
Did he like his chances this year?
“I do,” Ladd said with a grin. “I feel a little like we brought a gun to a knife fight. But, you never know.”
Those not competing were eager to promote their cars, to call attention to their work and drum up future business.
“We’re here to show them off,” said Roy Brizio, a Northern California builder who attended his first Grand National in 1958 — at the age of 2, with his custom car creator father — and who has built specialty vehicles for rockers Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck and Neil Young.
Among the six cars Brizio was showcasing were a 1941 Willys coupe, a 1932 Ford roadster pickup, and a very 1932 Ford Victoria.
The value of the cars? An average of about $250,000 each, Brizio said.
Another musician was touring the halls Thursday as the show got set up. Blues guitarist and car collector Jimmy Vaughn, a solo artist who played for decades with The Fabulous Thunderbirds, said he’d been coming to the Grand National show for more than a decade, and has been in love with custom cars since he was a boy.
“When I was a kid learning to play the guitar, I thought, ‘If I get good on this thing, maybe I can make some money and get me a car,’” Vaughn said. “And that’s what happened.”
One entire hall housed a collection known as “Tri-Five,” containing nothing but 1955, 1956 and 1957 Chevrolets -- about 80 of them. Part of another hall was given over exclusively to wood-paneled Woodys.
A special motorcycle area was home to custom choppers and bobbers. Another area, nicknamed “Suede Hall,” featured rough-edged hot rods still in their primer, or “suede,” paint jobs.
In another hall, Colorado car builder Ken Reister was primping an unusual pair of custom creations: the Foose-designed “Impression” that won the 2007 AMBR award, and a matching Foose-designed “Expression” custom motorcycle.
Reister was hoping to win the America’s Most Beautiful Bike award and become the first owner to have top wins in the car and motorcycle categories.
The halls grew more and more crowded as the day grew long, as more chopped and lowered roadsters and hot rods rolled off flat bed trucks and roared into their exhibition hall parking spaces.
Surveying the scene, one veteran participant said it would only get more crowded as the weekend approached.
“This is the heart and soul of this business,” said Bobby Alloway, whose Tennessee custom shop Alloway’s Hot Rod Shop is one of the country’s most respected, and whose cars have collected two previous AMBR awards. “If you’re anybody, you’re here.”
