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The 60th anniversary of the Grand National Roadster Show (GNRS) was held on January 23 through the 25th, 2009, at the Los Angeles County Fairplex, in Pomona, California. This is one of those can’t miss car shows that the entire family can find something to love. Even with a bad economy, rising gas prices, inclement weather and the turmoil of the recent elections, somehow the GNRS invigorates even the most pessimistic. Roger Rohrdanz and I headed out to the show on Thursday to watch the set-up of the site and the incoming cars and vendors. Though the set-up day is not open to the public, it is a great opportunity to see and talk to exhibitors, owners, crew and vendors and see what they are facing in getting the show up and running. It is a huge endeavor, one that the owner and promoter of the GNRS, John Buck, his wife Annika Buck, their family and staff, work mightily to bring to us. Car fans in Southern California want the GNRS to continue to be a success, because we don’t want to lose it. The GNRS is the premier event, thought the Autorama in Detroit claims to be more important, the racing and show fans in the west prefer the GNRS. It is more than half-million dollar cars and celebrities. It is more than extraordinarily beautiful cars and outrageous designing. The GNRS is a huge event that draws the best cars, the most interesting people, and mixes them in a festival of sights and sounds that is intoxicating. It’s a chance to see one’s friends who have traveled from all around the world to attend this event. To adequately see the GNRS it takes at least two days. You can run through the buildings and out again in about 4 hours, if you don’t stop and talk to anyone or read any of the placards. But if you do stop, plan on a minimum of two days.
One area where people make a mistake is refusing to talk to the vendors. If they are not busy, stop and talk to them, or better yet, as you are shopping, ask them what other shows they sell at, what it’s like to be a vendor, what do they think of the GNRS and what their favorite cars are. Some of the vendors have led a very interesting life and have raced cars or exhibited show cars. Talk to the judges, if of course they aren’t busy judging. They can be a wealth of information. The volunteers this year wore yellow baseball caps with the GNRS logo on them. The volunteers are there to help make the show run smoother and if they are not busy they can give you a lot of history. Finally, the best people to meet and talk to are the exhibitors. These men and women invest a great deal of love, care, money, time and talent into creating a car that reflects their personalities. They take the time to bring their cars to the show, pay for that privilege and sit back and wait for the judging to end. They love to talk about their cars and what they have done to restore or build them and they will answer your questions. Not all of the vendors, officials, volunteers and exhibitors will talk to you. As with any show, there were a few of the grumpy sort. I didn’t find many like that, and by far the people at the GNRS are the nicest anywhere. Another thing that you should do is stop and read the signs and placards. They offer a world of information and the owners put them together with great care. Often there will be handouts and flyers and this is another source of interesting data. There are bands, pin-up contests, pinstripers reunion, pinstripers auction and guest celebrities there to see. Billy Gibbons, Henry ‘The Fonz’ Winkler and other well-known celebrities come in to sign autographs and to talk to their fans. John Buck has agreements to bring them to the show and it costs him quite a bit, so make the effort to see and talk to the stars.
Then there are the car stars. Is that a new term; car stars? It refers to the people whom we have all known and admired over the years and who we would love to meet and ask a few questions. One of the car stars was Ed Iskenderian, the beloved ‘Camfather’ of the old Pete Millar CARtoons comic strips. Ed was grinding cams out of his garage and selling them to the dry lakes racers before the GNRS was even formed and he looked fit and healthy, touring the Suede Palace and looking at all the traditional hot rods. With him was professional photographer Ron Lee. Another car star was Ed Justice Jr, who is the president of Justice Brothers Car Care Products and the host of his own 2 hour-long radio show on the car culture. Alex Xydias was another car star who was there to oversea the So-Cal Speed Shop exhibit and booth, owned by his good friend and partner, Pete Chapouris. Xydias made the red and white coupes, belly tanks and streamliners famous at the dry lakes and Bonneville. A good friend of Wally Parks, Xydias tells about the time he hired Parks to draw the So-Cal logo and Parks drew a cow. A speed shop cow it turns out. Well, why not? Another car star was Bruce Meyer, who long before hot rods became fashionable, bought old hot rods and had them restored. Meyer is one of only a few that can be truly credited with bringing hot rodding to acclaim among the general public and overcoming the dislike of car show promoters towards these coupes and roadsters. Blackie Gejeian is another car star who was on hand. Blackie won the AMBR award for America’s Most Beautiful Roadster at the 1955 GNRS and has been making, restoring and showing the best in hot rods ever since. Gene Winfield is another car star. He is portrayed in the upcoming movie Deuce of Spades and his role parallels his life. Gene has been a hot rodder all his life.
The first person we ran into was Dave Lindsay, who owns and publishes the on-line website called SoCal Car Culture. He lists over a thousand car shows and events on his website and attends many of them to take photographs of the cars. You won’t find any text, but you will find lots of photos and dozens of events to go to each and every week, throughout the year, in the Southern California region. Vic Cunnyngham, a member of the Cal-Rod car club walked by and told us that his club has volunteered to do the set up, move in and tear down after the show. He and his club members were busy waving cars into the building and showing them where to park. There was to be only seven buildings used for this year’s GNRS, but the promoters overbooked about 80 entrants and few exhibitors failed to show up. All promoters take slightly more than capacity, so that in case there are no-shows, they will have cars to take their place. But everyone showed up! John Buck made every effort to try and accommodate the extra car owners, even renting another building for the first time, the Fine Arts Building next door to the Wally Parks NHRA Motorsports Museum. The entrance was tiny, the L-shaped turns treacherous, but Buck got 37 additional cars into this art museum. Buck did everything that he could to reduce the parking lot turbulence and angry feelings, but a few car exhibitors left in anger and drove home, unable to exhibit their cars at the show. A special exhibit within the GNRS was the “Twice In A Lifetime” exhibit in Building 9, featuring many of the cars that won the AMBR Award over the years. There was Carter Fisher ’51 roadster, Ermie Immerso’s car that won twice and now owned by the Petersen Automotive Museum. Tayna and Steve Mank were on hand to tell us about the car and that Immerso won the AMBR Award back to back in 1988 and ’89. Also on hand was Blackie Gejeian’s Shishkabob.
Russ Meeks, from Oregon, showed off his roadster. Bones Noteboom was there with his son, Kutty Noteboom, who builds bikes for the show. Bones is well-known as a hot rodder, car builder, designer and boat racer. He has done it all. He told me that he may sell his molds for the bodies of his outstanding 1935 roadster, and then retire. Dennis and Barbara Ingrao came from Yucaipa, California and this was their first GNRS as car exhibitors. Tom Thibodeaux, a Cal-Rod with a cart, invited me to go with him to find Sam Falco in the parking lot and bring his ’50 purple Merc into the building. We passed a lot of cars, still waiting for a spot in the show and I hoped they made it in. Tom introduced me to Joe Moreno, a legend of car exhibitors and a member of the West Coast Customs Hall of Fame. Joe is a bear of a man and his hand crushed mine in his as he said hello and told me about the various car shows and the GNRS. He pointed out that the Theme for this year was Western and many exhibitors brought in fake cactus, sand, cowboy hats and cardboard pistols and holsters to decorate their exhibits. Moreno told me that Rich and Penny Brichette started the West Coast Customs in Paso Robles many decades ago as the “Half way point between San Francisco and Los Angeles.” As Tom left he waved to Thumper, one of the hard working Cal-Rodders. I continued on foot in order to talk to some of the vendors and exhibitors and met Greg Davis who owns Past Time Signs, which are made in San Diego. He is licensed by the National Hot Rod Association (NHRA) to do signs for them and has been doing creative art for 15 years. Nearby was the Brookville Roadster Semi and even though it was drizzly, they had their roadster bodies neatly displaced outdoors. I went inside the Suede Palace, a barn-like building where the traditional hot rodders were setting up, under the watchful eye of Axle Idzardi, a hot rodder who looks like he came from back east. Axle is a no nonsense guy whom all the other young hot rodders respect for his never-ending hard work and dedication to the sport that he loves.
The Suede Palace has the energy and it’s where the kids hang out, or anyone under 40, which in hot rodding are the young. I noticed that a lot of last year’s vendors were gone and attributed that to the horrendous business slump we lived through. Sad, because these were young men and women with a dream to set up their new companies and prosper in the hot rodding world. But there were a lot of new faces and new names and the building was filled, as it was last year. Traditional hot rodders can be broken down into rat rodders, who prefer rust, but not neglect, and come closest to the old days in the 1930’s and ‘40’s, to the primers, who eschew chrome and fancy paint jobs for cars that are neat and primered. Don’t think for an instant that they are simply unskilled because their cars are not as elaborate as the AMBR cars are. These traditional hot rodders put a lot of creative thought and talent into their creations and a lot more money than you would think. I looked at an old Belly Tank, the 1948 #557-A King/Henson Tank, a Sidewinders car club racer powered by a Ford V8-60 engine, with an Edelbrock manifold, Ed Winfield cam and Kong ignition that went 112.92 at El Mirage. There was a band called the ‘Police and Thieves,’ with four gorgeous ladies and three musicians and they belted out some great soul music.
I walked between the buildings, but didn’t notice as many vendors outdoors as I did the year before. Inside Building 4, where the AMBR cars were located, I came upon Clyde ‘Ross’ Morgan and his wife, Leann Morgan. Morgan started casting bronze figures of western figures in 1981 and his bronzes were every bit as good as any Remington. The westerns sold for upwards of $50,000, but it was his newer creations of cars that garnered a second look. In 2004 he began to do Model A’s, with intricate details. Each detail took time to mold in clay, then a rubber mold, from there he dips the rubber mold in a ceramic slurry over and over again, which he fills with wax in the lost wax method. The molten bronze is then poured into the ceramic mold, melting and evaporating the wax, leaving the image behind. There were 113 molds necessary to make the ’32 Model A. It takes skill and patience to make every little piece, but when it was all done, he had a masterpiece. Morgan invented a bicycle grip, sold his company and in Idaho and moved to Sedona, Arizona to begin a second life as a sculptor. Besides showing his work at the GNRS, he has also exhibited his work at the Calgary Stampede and the Barrett/Jackson Auction. Morgan makes a limited number of models and he told me a secret. The first models in a set sell for about half the price of the last models. I asked him why and he said that collectors often hold out thinking that a set might not sell, then when they do they have to have the last one, no matter what the price. So it pays to be the collector who buys the first few bronzes, not the last ones made. After the last bronze is made, the molds are broken and no more will ever be made. Fast Ed’s Interiors from Gardena, California had a very nice display with paneled wood flooring. They told me it takes a day to set up the display, but only an hour to tear it down and leave.
I went over to the www.hotrodhotline.com booth and spoke to Mary Ann and Jack Lawford, from Boise, Idaho. With them was their son and one of their staff members, Janice. The Lawfords will do anything to help car shows and car events succeed. They are the friendliest and most helpful people I’ve had the pleasure of meeting. They rent booths, give sponsorships and publicize hundreds of car shows around the country. But the best thing that they do is have an extra chair for me to sit down and rest my feet from the constant walking that is necessary in order to cover this huge event. Next door to them was Jerry Kugel, who was exhibiting one of his fine cars in the AMBR category. Jerry is one of those Car Stars that make any show better. He has been involved in automotive ventures all his life and is an active member of the Southern California Timing Association (SCTA). He raced his door slamming Firebird at Bonneville around 2000 and went 305 mph. How would you like to race your sedan that fast? He also beat my brother’s record by 81 miles per hour. Now it’s one thing to lose your record to a faster car, but to get beat by over eighty mph is rather humbling. Kugel builds more than race cars and his shop in La Habra turns out some of the most beautiful hot rods and roadsters you will ever see. His cars are not just “trailer queens” that are just for show. Kugel’s cars are driven to the show and then after showing off his roadsters, he drives them home. Jerry is a hot rodders hot rodder and a good friend. His cars are utilitarian, cleanly built and he doesn’t throw on all the junk that the other AMBR car builders feel that they have to add. A Kugel car is a true hot rod, well-built, well-designed and drivable.
Move-in day starts on Wednesday, continues into Thursday and at noon on Friday the doors open to the public and there is a rush of people flooding into the 8 buildings. Saturday has an outdoor car show where for the normal price of admission and parking, you can park your car around the big buildings and have your own car show. This is also the day for the pin-up show in the Suede Palace and the Pinstripers Reunion and auction. The ladies dress up in the Rockabilly fashions of the 1940’s and ‘50’s and they look as lovely as ever. There’s something quite enchanting when watching the yesteryear come alive again. There is also a banquet given for the GNRS Hall of Famers. Sunday is the Awards presentation and it last for hours as it seems like hundreds of trophies in dozens of categories are given out. Roger and I drove in the front gate and there was Ingrid Herman there to meet us. Ingrid has worked at the Fairplex for many years and she is always the first person we see. We stopped to visit with Bobbie Colgrove at the Wally Parks NHRA Motorsports Museum and let her know that Bud and Bev Coons had stopped by earlier to let us know that Eric ‘Rick’ Rickman had passed away. Bud Coons was a police sergeant for the city of Pomona, California back in the early 1950’s, when my father asked him to head up the NHRA Safety Safari. Bud took along Rickman, Chic Cannon and Bud Evans and they toured the country, talking to police and city officials in an effort to develop safe and sanctioned drag strips where young people could race on. There is no telling how many lives they saved by their efforts. Rickman was 90 when he passed away and was a respected and beloved photographer and friend to hot rodders everywhere. We spoke to John Buck and his wife Annika and remarked on how calm they appeared while running this huge show. With them were Tiffany Buck-Kirton, Nicole Lawrence and Laura Bakewell, a most capable staff.
I walked over to Building 3, the Fine Arts building and counted the number of cars. There were 37 of them, including one of Chip Foose’s. This was the building that John Buck rented in a hurry in order to get those cars left out of the show, into the show. I spoke to Scott Miller who was showing off his ’31 Fordillac. Scott told me that he has been at all the GNRS that have been held at Pomona. Jimmy White had three cars on exhibit, a ’33 Ford roadster, a ’28 Model A and a ’31 Model A. He is from Circle City Hot Rods in Orange, California. Piero Deluca brought his ice blue Model A, called “Livewire,” to the drive-in cruise show on Saturday. Mitch McNally exhibited the “Rockabilly Playboy,” a ’49 Ford Custom Convertible. Mitch is from Cypress, California and has been showing his cars at the GNRS for two years. Robert Collins, from Clovis, California attended his second GNRS with his ’57 Chevy and said that John Buck, “Stood up to the plate and got the job done,” when the overbooking became an apparent problem. Mike Emond, from Whittier, California exhibited his red ’66 Corvette Rally car. This was his first year at the GNRS. I ran into Dave May, one of those hot rodding volunteers who make things so much easier for all of us. Dave is always handing out literature, attending meetings and promoting the sport of drag racing and hot rodding. He told me that the noise lawsuit against the Fontana dragstrip has been dismissed and that the name change from Cherry Avenue to Speedway International Boulevard will take place later this year. Another fan favorite at the show is the model car building contest and show, and it isn’t only the kids who love to build model cars. The fast growing Ol’ Skool Rodz magazine company was on hand, gaining even more subscribers to their traditional hot rod culture.
The show even lets in fast boats and I ran into Steve McElroy and Mike Fry. McElroy was my right hand helper with the Boat Racers Reunion and a long-time jet boat racer and businessman. Fry races his Top Alcohol Hydro, called “Meanstreak,” in the NJBA. The National Jet Boat Association races at Lake Ming and Lake Elsinore. Tom Fritz had a booth at the show. Fritz is one of the premiere hot rod and dry lakes artists. Kenny Youngblood is the master of the genre, but Fritz, James Ibusuki and others are the heir apparent. I kid Tom and tell him that I should have discovered him when he was a starving young artist. He countered by saying, “I can put you on the lay-away plan.” Half a building was devoted to motorcycles and there was a great variety on hand. One tricycle had a “Blade Runner” look to it. Futuristic, powerful and metallic, it looked like it could handle any road problem. I would like to see the show expand the motorcycle exhibit, but the problem is that I would also like to see all the various kinds of exhibits expanded and there just isn’t any room. The show is huge as it is and it takes a full day just to walk through it all. Extreme Automotive, located in Corona, California and a major custom and hot rod building company, was busy building a hot rod in two days to give to John Buck as the official hot rod of the show, to be used by Buck in his promotions. The roadster wasn’t really built in that short a time. It was built at the shop and disassembled and then rebuilt at the show to give the spectators a look at how cars are put together and the exhibit drew large crowds and TV cameras. Extreme Automotive attends about 30 shows a year and they have an Xmas Party at their shop that is well-renowned. Another car artist to keep tabs on is James Owens and you can see his work at www.carnoir.com. I spoke to his wife, Kathleen Owens and she told me that he started painting in January, 2007 and has done very well, even in this bad economy. He shows his work at 30 events a year and his style resembles the B movie, film noir of the 1940’s and ‘50’s. The Grand National Roadster Shows is one of those special car events, but is surprisingly affordable and the activities are nearly endless.
Gone Racin’ is at [email protected].
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