HotRod and Restoration Trade Show 2012

Our first trip to the Hot Rod & Restoration Trade Show in Indy brought many surprises .... all of them pleasant !  We had not been to downtown Indianapolis before, and were really impressed .....  this is such a great example of what can be done to revitalize a downtown area and bring back life to a beautiful city.

There are many really beautiful, historic buildings... the architecture is just amazing.  Mixed in with buildings from the early 1900's are  60's buildings and then newer styles... all of which just blend together in an wonderful eclectic way.    In the early 90's  Indy set out to make a transformation .... and they certainly did a great job. 

They even utilized many of the old historic buldings to create a downtown mall.  Circle Center Mall was developed by using the 3rd - 5 th floors of several  Historic buildings ....  building boutique shops and big name department stores in these sites... and then  CONNECTING them all together via  Sky Walks between the buildings. What a genius idea !   There are also skywalks from several downtown hotels into the Mall.

But... enough about the City .... on to the Tradeshow.    This year the show was held not in the usual Convention Center location....  apparently it got booked with a big Volleyball Convention ... but at the Lucas Oil Stadium.  Home to this years  Super Bowl.   What a great venue.  It was really amazing to be on the field of the stadium, surrounded by the towering stadium bleachers and the huge Scoreboard .. now showing Trade Show activities.    It was really a great setting.   

There were well over 100 exhibiting businesses and 40+ New Products introduced.  The event consisted several days of seminars from leading industry companies,  followed by the 2 day trade show in the stadium.  We got really great feedback from the spectators about the seminars.

There are several awards given out at this show every year... the most notable being the  Robert Petersen Lifetime Achievement Award.  This years recipient was Ed "Isky" Iskenderian of Isky Cams ...  aka The CamFather !    Isky is a great guy and just full of wonderful stories.  We loved hearing him at the Deuce Week Roundtable and so were looking forward to seeing him at Indy.

Isky had a car in the Dynamat booth right across the aisle from us ...it was his car from the 40's that he ran at El Mirage.  What a great piece of Rodding History ... and boy did that car get the attention of the crowds.  Everyone had a smile on their face after looking over that car and reading about the history.   Those that were lucky had a chance to talk to Isky too.   

There's was lots to see ...  so we'll get on with the show....  We'll have a separate article about the New Products ... here we'll cruise the stadium and show you the vendors and the great cars that were on display.