Well, my wife and I loaded up our youngest (along with all the "gear" it takes to take a 23-month old on an "over-nighter"), and headed north to the Detroit Autorama over the weekend. I was a little concerned about the weather. A huge storm was moving into the Midwest early Friday morning. When I got to school, we were already on a 2-hr early dismissal for the day. By 11:00, the snow had already been falling, and I had received a phone call from the superintendent telling me that he had called the bus drivers and we would be sending the kids home even earlier @ noon.
In a way, this was good news for me. I could get home and we could leave for Detroit a little earlier than I had anticipated. Hopefully, we could get ahead of the storm.
We didn't have any trouble on the drive north. In fact, the storm tracked across Indiana and Ohio with Muncie, Indiana being at the northern edge. We arrived in Detroit at about 7:30 pm Friday evening. Once we unloaded, we relaxed by hitting the hotel pool and hot tub. (Both my wife and the little guy love the water!)
The next morning, we awoke to some snow falling in Detroit. We got ready and went down to the hotel restaurant for a buffet breakfast. The hotel lobby and restaurant were filled with people who were obviously heading to the show. Lots of 'gearhead' tee-shirts and car club jackets. I love talking to other car guys, and struck up a conversation with a guy while waiting for my omelet. The guy told me he was from Ottawa, Canada. He had come down with a bunch of folks on a "bus package deal". They were all excited about getting to the show after breakfast.
Well...to make a long story short. We finished our breakfast (the omelet and waffle were outstanding!), and decided to walk to the Cobo Center. Our hotel was only about 5 blocks up the street. Bottom line....the show was AWESOME! The main floor of the Cobo Center was filled with vendors and what I like to call "Trailer Queens". Trailer Queens are High Dollar, High Maintenance vehicles that seldom see any road time....no rock chips or bug juice on these babies! These "show cars" spend their lives being pushed in and out of enclosed trailers traveling from event to even. Now don't get me wrong...these cars were INCREDIBLE (as I hope you will see from my photographs), however I was very anxious to see if the stories I've read about the Cobo Center "basement" were true.
View of the snow, traffic, and Cobo Center as we walked from our hotel.
We started in the center aisle of the main floor and worked our way through the left side. A "special shout-out" to the fine folks at Detroit Muscle for officially welcoming us! They were the first vendor that we visited. They were very welcoming, and spent time entertaining my 23-month old son. They gave him a Detroit Muscle decal for his stroller and a cool Detroit Muscle key chain light. We ended up buying a cool Detroit Muscle tee-shirt for him. (Unfortunately I asked for a 4T and didn't realize they gave us a Youth Medium until the next morning when I took it out of the bag to put it on him for the drive home.) Oh well...the boy will grow into it!
Again...overall, a very
AWESOME day. After about a dozen photos, my camera batteries went south. At that point, I was thinking, "Man, I'm really glad I packed a couple extra packages of batteries." You can imagine my disgust then, when I opened both
NEW packages of batteries and
COULD NOT FIND TWO that had enough "juice" to allow me to take any more pictures. "Dagnabbit!", I screamed, "How am I going to take any pictures for my blog if I can't get any of these stinkin' batteries to work?!?!?!" Well, fortunately, I was able to get my hand stamped, go out into the lobby, and buy a couple of fresh batteries. (I had to pay a HUGE mark up...$3 bucks for 2 AA's), but I was able to get back into the show and take a
BUNCH of pictures.
This 32 roadster had an interesting interior treatment. Sort of an American Indian motif with a snake skin insert on the door panel.
Well, I will be adding additional postings and pictures from the Detroit Autorama in the days ahead. All-in-all, I think I took about 85-90 photographs, hopefully you will enjoy them!
(I'm having trouble uploading photographs this afternoon. I'll get more up in the next few days.)
Here are a few more pictures taken from the basement at the Cobo Center during the 2008 Detroit Autorama. I really like this little roadster pickup!
I think this is the first car I've seen with metal flake scallops. This 1932 Ford Sedan was one of the last cars I checked out before we returned back upstairs at the Autorama. We still had 1/2 of the main level to visit!
I was very surprised to see this car. Last summer, it was on a trailer parked right behind us at the Aesthetic Finishers Customer Appreciation Cruise-In in Piqua, Ohio. At that time, the car was not finished. The owner had started his focus on the engine and engine "accessories" at that time. Last summer the car was not running, absolutely no interior, glass, etc. Nice to see that it's finished!
I thought this early Ford pickup was unique. The owner went with the fenderless, patina look with the body, but chose to use a more unique approach with the running gear. Narrow spoked rims up front, with wider spoked rims in the rear. The wide whitewalls along with the bright white powdercoating on the wheels really make them contrast with the patina of the truck's body.
This car, affectionately named "Freak Show" by it's owner was pictured in the SEMA Show Recap article on pages 42 and 43 of the January 2008 issue of Ol' Skool Rodz.
I'm not sure, but I believe this rod came off the assembly line as a mid-60's Chevrolet or GMC pickup. Obviously, this thing has been through some seriously wicked modifications! I didn't have nearly enough time to fully appreciate all the custom details on this truck! I loved the flame job, suicide doors, leopard and white interior, and this INCREDIBLE "ghost" Aztec mural on the tonneau cover just to name a few.
