Back to the Future
By: Tony T-Bone Colombini
It is time to kick-off another show season and here we are at the grand daddy of them all, The Grand National Roadster Show. The event was spectacular. With cars from all around the world, it was nice to see some new rides, some familiar friends and some great unveilings. Watch for features in the near future of Swoopy, CW Restoration’s 41 Willys featured on this season of Chop Cut Rebuild, Sylvester III, and a custom 55 Nomad. Also we will highlight some of the new products from the show such as Bedwood and Parts’ EZ Rub Oil Finish and Walden Speed Shop’s NEW vintage Cragar Blowers!
The event had some great side stories such as the collaboration of Ed Tillrock with The Queen of Cars, Genevieve Chappell unveiling a new drawing and first in the series called Vintage Curves. Mike Faria showed his bitchen white trike, which was debuted earlier this month at the Easyriders Tour in Anaheim. Our friends at the 401k Club Hot Rod Shop took home best Street Machine for the custom ’69 Camaro they had in their booth, and our buddy Don Chambers saw his third dream a reality as he entered his custom 55 Nomad in the show. We were proud to see BOXKARS there with their Hot Rod Bicycles, which turned quite a few heads with their 63” wheelbase cruisers.
We met Actress/Model Erin Micklow, Paul Michael Glaser (Starsky), John D’Agostino and watched George Barris get an eyeful at the Trophy Queen pinup contest. Outside we caught up with our friends from the Mercifuls So Cal, and Al from Easy Run Engine Test Stands. He had a great new accelerator feature on his test stands. Building three was full of vintage racecars and building 9 was packed with 80 influential deuces!
The Suede Palace was a blast with music rockin all weekend long and Saturday evening’s Trophy Queen pinup contest was really good. You can see the two-part video on Blacktop TV here. In the suede palace we met with our friends Joel and Mary from Vintage Klass, Max Grundy and his beautiful family, BOMONSTER, Jeff Styles, Kent Reppert, Big Toe, and Mitzi Valenzuela. Bomonster introduced me to Holly West. I really dig Hollys photos especially those in Traditional Rod and Kulture Illustrated magazine. Zombie and her have a great thing going up in Bakersfield.
We finished off the evening shooting Genevieve Chappell getting some cool artsy shots in the waning light. We feature these photos as our February 2012 Blacktop Betty!