Hot Rods and Kustom Cars
I got to watch the man himself in action. While the Backyard Garage crew was sectioning a shoebox a few feet away, a few other guys including Darryl Starbird himself and grandson Dakota Wentz were chopping a 56 Lincoln. While I was talking with Dakota, Darryl came over and joined in on the fun with the chop.
The crowd was great, the Fine Nine cars were great, I think the Next Generation Starbird Rod & Custom Show is headed in the right direction.
Here’s the winner of the 2015 Fine Nine Go For The Gold Award! An incredible kustom El Camino-Cadillac combo built by Keith Dean! More photos of it below in the blog post. Overall I think the show has taken a step in the right direction. I’m not the majority by far but I’d like to see even more kustoms and hot rods and less muscle cars, nothing against those kinds of cars but when the show has “rod & custom” in the name it’s not really a show I’d take a muscle car to. You wouldn’t take a Camaro to a the National Corvette Show would you? Eh, enough of my ranting. Make sure to give Jeff at Premier Body & Paint a call if you need some work done!
The show felt a little crowded this year, it may have been the bigger than normal crowd or it may have been with the grandstand set up on the east end of the upper floor the cars seemed a bit squished. Whatever the reason quarters seemed tight. There were a lot of the same cars that we see each year. Of course there was the Mustang club area where it seemed that each and every one had it’s hood up. Not really a photogenic look.
2015 marked the 51st Annual Starbird show in Tulsa, OK. This year’s show was the first of the “New Generation” show with Darryl stepping back as the head honcho and handing the reigns on to the next generation in his family. While I didn’t like going back to having racing and other motorsports downstairs, I understand that the bubble top display of 2014 was a one time thing. The attendance on Saturday when I was there was the biggest that I’ve seen at the show in years, I hope that’s a good sign for years to come.
The display above had some of the koolest builds of the 2015 KC World Of Wheels. I’ve added a few pics below. REALLY cool projects, I kinda want one now!
The KC World of Wheels has, like I’ve mentioned, all kinds of cars. Certain parts of the show are definitely more my style than others. I’m including all of the other parts because I want to show off the entire show, something I don’t normally do. Lucky for me there were some awesome rides like the Henry J above!
Starting with the last post (Part 2 here) I was in the middle of the Los Punk Rods display area at the show. I’ve been friends with a bunch of the LPR folks for a few years now, this was my favorite display of theirs at this show that I can remember. Bikes, shoeboxes, vans, kustoms and hot rods, it was right up my alley.
2015 KC World of Wheels
I’ve been attending this show for a few years, and I’ve seen some changes in it. Not for the best in my opinion but we all know what opinions are like. I loved the south hall when it was ran by my friends from Los Punk Rods club. I hear that Jack Walker will not be doing the Cavalcade of Customs after this year, I sure hope they get someone like him that is a true kustom fan to run it. The show this year had a lot of street rod style builds and restomod type stuff which I appreciate but I’m just not as jazzed about like I am traditional styled hot rods and kustoms. Enjoy the pics.
First off thanks to RJay’s for sponsoring this week’s coverage of the 2015 KC World of Wheels show! Because of Cory at RJay’s I’m able to offset some of the big travel costs of the Detroit trip in a couple of weeks, I appreciate it!
The Kansas City World of Wheels show has something for everyone. The Cavalcade of Customs is my favorite area but I may be a bit biased. The Los Punk Rods area was also pretty cool with the guys showing off the variety of rides that the members have. Lowrider magazine even had a huge section this year. I’m not a huge lowrider fan but the craftsmanship that it take to build some of these cars is truly impressive. We start the coverage this week with the Cavalcade of Customs display put together by Jack Walker.
I’ve updated the Shoebox only gallery on the site and thought I’d share some of them with you. One of these days I’ll get my shoebox lowered and get it’s custom grille built and I’ll take it to a show, until then I’ll just drool over these!
Since 2006 I’ve been shooting photos at car shows across the midwest. In August of 2010 I moved my galleries online to the hosting service Smugmug. Since that time the photo galleries have grown to over 51,800 images that have been viewed over 24,000,000 times!
Back in 2013 my buddy Dan from Dan’s Hot Rod Photos was kind enough to share some shots from the Detroit Autorama with all of us here. Not that I didn’t already want to go to Detroit, but man seeing it through Dan’s lens really made me make up my mind to go sometime. So next month, I’m going! A new show for me, hopefully a bunch of new rides for you to check out here.
Which has me thinking, just what do you people want from me?
Again this weekend I had no car show to go to, however I did make my annual trek down to the north side of Wichita to check out the 40th Annual Wichita Model A Club’s Sunflower Swap Meet in Park City, KS. Now I’m the worst kind of guy for a swap meet usually, I don’t get there on Friday morning when the best deals were to be had, I don’t have any disposable money to buy anything, I’m basically there to take up space, look at everything and buy nothing. So I spent a few hours there talking with friends, walking by all of the booths too fast to really see anything and generally just wasting time.
Awhile back I was invited by a friend to the 10th Annual Bare-Bones Car Club’s Polar Bear Cruise in the Chicago area. Unfortunately for me I couldn’t make it and from the looks of it I missed a hell of a time. All of the photos are used with permission from Scott from Phaeton Speed Shop.
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Since I didn’t have a car show on the schedule this weekend I looked for other alternatives and I saw my buddy Ricky from Anchor Moto had posted about a bike show. So, after staying up late to be one of the first subscribers to Motornation at 3 am I woke up early and drove a buddy to the Wichita airport. Which is a really dumb way to drive to Lawrence, KS from my place. So, 4 hours after I left home I showed up at the show which was 2 hours away from my place. The parking lot was full, and the entry fee of $5 was more than reasonable…
Yet another weekend with no car show to go to! So I gathered up a buddy and headed down to Wichita’s Go Away Garage for the January Final Friday. The Go Away Garage always has some great art on the walls and sometimes it’s car related. I took a few cell phone shots to share with you here below.
Since there was no show this weekend I went down to Tulsa, OK to shoot some feature videos for the upcoming MotorNation.tv channel. After that I headed over to the Joplin area to see what Ryno was up to. The Sharer Merc was up on the lift so that he could install the new 52 Mercury headlight rings and french the headlights behind them.
Normally I’m more of a traditional hot rod and kustom car guy, this show has some of that and tons of other stuff. The fact that the other stuff at this show is really good stuff means you see all of it. 🙂 I hope you’ve enjoyed the coverage of the Starbird-Devlin show this week!
There were over 60 cars contending for the Magnificent 7 this year, which is the biggest group in my memory. To be eligible it has to be the car’s first time showing in the Wichita area, that’s a lot of new rides for any show! You can see the Mag7 cars designated as the ones with the column of balloons next to them. Some of the balloons can be seen in the background of the photo above.
For most of the weekend I was hanging out with the Primary’s crew. They put on the Rumble car show that goes down Sept. 26th this year in Wichita. You can find out more info on their show here. Above is Steve McGregor’s model A, built a long time ago when it would have been called a rat rod, but now that term means something else and the car is classified as a hot rod. This is one of the reasons that people are so confused on what is and isn’t a rat rod, the dang term has changed definitions over the years. I love this car.
Showing at an indoor event is always a bit of a hassle. For those of us that live out of town it adds a degree of difficulty to show at an event like the 2015 Starbird Devlin Show. For me it started Wednesday evening with a 90 mile drive to Wichita to drop off my daily driver in a parking garage. Then Thursday I took off mid morning to get the Galaxie washed and drive her to Century II. By 4pm I had the Galaxie in the show and cleaned up and I was back at work. I even had a few minutes to stop by Deville’s Barber Shop & Shaving Parlor to get myself looking good for the weekend.
Another amazing weekend with my rod/kustom family! The 58th Annual Starbird-Devlin Show filled up fast, 5 of the cars that were supposed to be in the Kustom City display were too late when they tried to register for the event. The 36 Ford that you see above was one of the Kustom City display and I’ll be shooting a feature video of it soon!
Although the show was small, I think you can see that the overall quality of the show was very high! Lots of great rides and people to hang out with. I’m glad I made the trek, just wish I could have stayed longer!
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4
Gears & Gals was on hand to sell their great magazine.
As was pointed out on my Facebook page, there are a lot of NO’s on this list. Can anyone help come up with a list of Yes items that would help make a traditional styled hot rod & kustom car show stay on track? Nothing against the cars that do not meet the criteria of this show but there are plenty of other shows out there for them. You wouldn’t take a Mustang to a Corvette show, this list is just to help make sure the right kind of cars come to the 2015 Retro Rewind.
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4
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See you at a show,
Royboy
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Early Saturday morning Todd and I headed off for Dubuque’s Five Flags Center for the 2015 Retro Rewind. Todd was vending at the show along with a few other friends of mine including Ed Tillrock, Gears & Gals and a ton of other folks. It was cold out, REALLY cold out with temps in the negative without the windchill. The countryside between Marion & Dubuque was really beautiful in it’s winter wonderland-ness. The show takes up as much room as is available in the building, packing in a bunch of great cars and bikes!