Hotrod-a-Rama downtown Tacoma 8-4-07

[427TJ]

My pleasure gentlemen! Back when Bruce started posting his Pavilions photos I got hooked on the "car shows" we got on our PCs from all of his photos. I'm trying to pay-back the favor with my photos!

The '55 Chevy wagon isn't a Nomad, it's a regular 2-door wagon. I love that car! Besides, Nomads are 40K on up these days so a 2-door wagon seems like a big money saver.

The '69 Barracuda on the ramp truck is owned by Brad Barrie. Brad is a t-shirt vendor and owns a killer orange '55 Chevy post car with 427, 4-speed, American 200-S wheels and radiused rear wheelwells. It has "Falfa Speed Shop" lettering on the quarters and is my favorite '55. Brad's '69 Barracuda is a dealer-modified car from a dealer named Savage, I think. It once had fiberglass front end parts that customized the car and the dealer made several of these Barracudas, some with 440s, 383s, and Brad's is one of the 340 cars. I think his show board said that there were about 8-10 of these customized Barracudas built by the dealership in 1969.

As for the lack of paint/body men in the Pacific Northwest--I know the comment was meant as a joke--but I think these guys are so hard-core and rebellious that this unpainted look is a badge of honor. It's also reality. Most of us couldn't afford high-dollar paint when we were young hot-rodders (and street-machiners) and many cars looked just like these patina'd rods we see here. REAL patina, that is, not the faked patina that has become popular. I think it's also a rejection of the 100K-up glossy billet cars that almost pushed the hobby out of the financial reach of the typical rodder. As a matter of fact, I thought that some of the glossy big-buck rods at yesterday's show were out of place and not part of the essence of the Hotrod-a-Rama. Think of it, you can't win the America's Most Beautiful Roadster trophy today without spending at least 200K on an undriveable trailer queen. There's no way a clean drivable roadster with traditional styling will ever win the AMBR--it is now the domain of the rich guys. The back-lash to that is what we see here. "IT IS FU**IN' FINISHED!" on the back of that '50 Chevy pickup sums it up perfectly. I love that. Patchy primer and faded paint, even rust holes, is just fine to these guys and f-you if you disagree. And what's obvious to me is that these guys are having a great time with their cars and not mortgaging their life away doing it.