Grand National Roadster Show rides again

So many great roadsters, only three days to ogle them.

The 63rd Grand National Roadster Show opens on Friday and runs through Sunday night, when they hand out the million or so awards to just about everybody who showed up. This is the ninth year the show has been held at the L.A. County Fairplex in Pomona, Calif., having moved south from its Bay Area roots where it was known forever--and by some even today--as the Oakland Roadster Show or, simply, Oakland.

New owner John Buck, who someday will stop being referred to as the new owner but not yet, has done a stellar job of hauling in many different facets of the rod and kustom universe to broaden the appeal of the sprawling event to as many paying cutomers (kustomers?) as possible.

This year there will be about a zillion cars on display, and about two zillion on Saturday and Sunday when the Grand Daddy Drive-In takes place. OK, zillion is an exaggeration. There are about 500 cars parked in the Fairplex's 10 huge art deco halls for all three days of the show, but on Saturday and Sunday, Buck promises another 400 to 800 cars scattered across the Fairplex's grounds. With sunny weather predicted that number likely will be closer to the 800 end of the scale. In between those there will be live music, some vendors and more unhealthy BBQ than even you can possibly eat. Yes, it's a parking-lot paradise.

But the main draw, the history-making part of the show, has always been the AMBR. AMBR stands for America's Most Beautiful Roadster, an award given to just one car for each of the show's 63 years. So all those guys who grew up smuggling copies of Hot Rod and Rod & Custom into history class and who bought and dropped ancient 1932 Fords as their first cars but then grew up, made a couple bazillion dollars and suddenly realized they were happiest when they had nothing but that beater Deuce, have all now hired builders to realize their teenage fantasies and transport them back to those halcyon days with a new car. Damn the cost.

Those guys are the ones who build hot rods and enter them in the AMBR category at Oakland--er, excuse us--Pomona, get them judged on Wednesday, set them up on perfectly shampooed, roped-off carpet on Thursday, then sit and wait on chromed pins and needles until Sunday night to see whether their $1 million (or more) investment will finally pay off in a replica of the nine-foot-tall AMBR trophy that is transported around in its own hardened silo with wheels.

And there were a lot of those guys on hand when we stopped by on Thursday.

The first builder we spoke to was Roy Brizio, one of the nicest guys in hot-rodding or any other organized social group. Brizio's shop in South San Francisco, just a monkey-wrench's throw away from SFO, has built literally hundreds of variations on the 1932 Ford Roadster. This year's entry was for Tom Gloy, whom we remembered from his days as a racer and team owner in Trans-Am.

“You remember those days!” he gasped. “No one's old enough to remember those days.”

But we did. He had a shop right in the paddock of what was then known simply as Sears Point. Gloy was different from the typical entrant. He came by his interest in hot-rodding a little late in life.

“It all started with Hurley Haywood at Daytona in 1988,” he said.

Haywood was driving around in a '34 Cabriolet. Gloy loved the car.

“He gave me Roy's number,” Gloy said.

So he went to Brizio's shop.

“Roy said, ‘What do you want?' I said, ‘I don't know.'”

So Brizio sent him out to look at hot rods for a couple years.

“Fifteen years later I came back and he asked me the same question, ‘What do you want?'”

This time he was better prepared to answer.

“I knew I had to have a race car, it had to be driveable and comfortable and I had to be able to get my six-foot frame into it.”

Brizio went to work, starting, as you might expect, with a '32 Ford. The car he did was a '32 but smaller in every direction: channeled six inches, the grille shell and cowl were narrowed two inches, the windshield was lowered two inches and the rear-end wheel-well area was completely remolded. The body is lowered over the frame rails and the seats are lowered into the floorpan. Under the hood is a Hilborn-injected 302 Ford V8.

But Gloy never planned to enter it in a competition, it was just to drive. However . . .

“It kept getting bitchiner and bitchiner,” Gloy said.

So here it is. Entered in the AMBR class at the GNRS.

About 30 feet away but from a whole 'nother approach was Hayden Groendyke's “Marmon Sixteen.” Yes, that Marmon.

“It's something a little different,” said builder Jason Smith of the Hot Rod Garage in Sand Springs, Okla. “It's somewhat unique.”

Groendyke's father is a Duesenberg and Auburn Cord collector while Hayden is more of a hot-rod guy.

“This was a way to blend the two worlds,” Smith said.

The car is an actual Marmon with a real Marmon V16 underhood. It has about 200 hp, “but the torque is unbelievable,” according to Smith. Smith did a lot of work, particularly to the rear half, where he followed original Marmon blueprints, but much of the car is original. It looks about twice as large as anything else entered in the class.

Across the aisle from the Marmon was Bill Lindig's Indy Speedster V8, built by the SoCal Speed Shop. It was a car Lindig had been watching and longing for for 12 years before he bought it in 2007 from racer Jack Howarton.

“I just love the contours of the body,” Lindig said.

The car was well-known before Lindig got it, but it was never going to be finished. So Lindig handed it over to SoCal and they added details throughout.

“They say the devil's in the details? This one's got a lot of devil in it,” said Lindig.

One difference with this car is that it has been driven--a lot.

“Oh g**d*** it's a kick in the a**,” Chapouris said.

Across the hall from SoCal was Sylvester III, the reborn version of a hot rod that had been exhibited at Oakland in 1962 named Sylvester II and then stored in a barn for 35 years. Paul Shaughnessey of New Metal Kustomz in Cotati, Calif., found it in that barn.

“At first I wanted to put it on the road, but then I did some research on it and decided to bring it back to its show condition,” Shaughnessey said.

The car is striking, brilliantly shining in dark red paint and new chrome on the engine. But the most amazing thing about this entry is that Shaughnessey is only 30 years old, less than half the average age of rodders in the hall. Maybe there's hope for a new generation.

Dennis Varni's deep blue '33 was built by Steve Moal.

“It has an elegant fa

By Mark Vaughn