Auto Shows: They Love Speed

Once the state fair was the big event. Now the same kind of popcorn festivity animates the custom auto show. There will be nearly 70 such exhibitions this spring, from Medford, Ore., to Worcester, Mass. Last weekend alone, hot-rod shows were held in Fresno, Youngstown and Cedar Rapids. They are drawing large crowds too: 40,000 in Dayton, 50,000 in Louisville. After a look at the recent International Speed Custom Cycle Auto Show in Chicago, TIME Correspondent David Wood sent this report:

A GIRL in a purple bikini stands on an old milk box, having an American flag painted on her belly by a man whose jacket proudly announces: COMPETITION PAINT BY PHILL--CHI-TOWN.

An usher, a young kid with straw-colored hair sticking out from under an oversize cap, bends to peer inside a dragster, then remembers that he is an official usher and quickly straightens up. "We gotta keep our eye out for ruffians," he says. "Haven't seen any yet."

He is nearly bowled over by a bearded giant in blue jeans with a LOVE patch sewn on his backside, a KEEP ON TRUCKIN' T shirt stretched across his chest, and a fuzzy tam-o'-shanter perched on his head. He is squeezing the hand of his girl friend, a teased blonde in a Day-Glo orange pantsuit and sequined glasses, carrying a suitcase-size black patent leather handbag and a bag of candy. They crunch along through the litter of wrappers and handbills toward the star attraction, the dazzling Muzi-Kart, a customized 1933 Willys.

Joy. Muzi-Kart's fiber-glass body has been lifted up to display a gleaming, hand-built $4,500 engine that jets the car down the drag strip at 150 m.p.h., a single bucket seat contoured to the exact dimensions of the driver, a tiny two-handled steering mechanism, and an automatic fire-extinguisher system.

John Muzik, a tall, amiable 34-year-old toolmaker from Flint, Mich., built the car in his garage, spending more than $9,000 to produce a vehicle worth $20,000. The prize money that he wins for best custom car at the shows (roughly $500 each time) pays most of his expenses, and he has the car booked for exhibitions almost every weekend through June. "But the real joy is building the damn thing," says Muzik, running his polish rag over a thumbprint on the body. "It sure is a beautiful machine. I don't race it too often."

The racing cars are there, though.

One is the 700-h.p., 183-m.p.h. mini-dragster called "the Hud." It looks deceptively like a 1973 Camaro. But, lightened by a fiber-glass body and fueled by explosive nitromethane, the car can streak down a quarter-mile from a standing start in 6 1/2 seconds. To achieve that flash of glory, two Chicago pipefitters labored five hours a night, putting together the right combination of engine, transmission and body. "Your car not only has to run fast, it has to look good," says the Hud's wrench (chief mechanic), Tom Jordan, 33. "If your $1,500 paint gets chipped, that's the breaks. You make the spectators respect you for a good-looking car."

Every weekend Jordan and Owner-Driver Joe Arrigo, pipefitters by profession, take their machine, in which they have invested $10,000, out to race or show. Sometimes they race twice in a weekend, sleeping at small-town dragstrip motels, eating dragstrip hot dogs, breathing dragstrip fumes, building themselves up for that 6 1/2seconds, adding up their points to qualify for the grand nationals and plotting their way to the next small town. Says Jordan: "We love speed."

Across the concourse in Chicago, Dennis Pearson sits in a beach chair behind his entry, a 1967 El Camino pickup truck chromed and painted and gussied up into a real showstopper. Pearson, 26, a stocky, crew-cut body-shop owner from Louisville, began a year ago to repair the engine in his truck and maybe do a little body work. Some $6,000 and "a helluva lotta hours" later, he hitched up the truck behind his station wagon, packed in his wife Bernadene and their four-year-old daughter Zandra and entered the exhibition circuit. In Detroit he picked up an award for the "Outstanding Custom Pickup," but the prize money--$90 --hardly paid his expenses. "All this traveling to auto shows gives me great ideas for my body shop," says Pearson. His wife adds with a smile: "Sitting here is okay when the bands are playing. It goes along with our marriage." Like Pearson, most of the custom connoisseurs are rather average family men, a cross section of steady wage earners who can afford the paint and parts needed to satisfy their obsession.

Around them swirls the carnival of the auto show. The 300 cars and 60 motorcycles are roped off from the crush of the public, the starflake paint mirroring the mustache and leather jacket of a hot-rodder bending close to inspect the chrome-plated carburetors, and his little brother in jeans and a Ski-Doo jacket peering in to see how high the speedometer goes. Down the aisle sits "Peaches and Kreme," a 1934 Ford coupe with a 1968 Corvette engine and a body painted "Campus Creme" on top and "Bronze Starflake" below (and a sign: DO NOT TOUCH THIS CAR UNLESS YOU ARE COMPLETELY NUDE!). Near by a crowd is gathering in front of the "Archie Bunker Hard Hat Hauler." The Hauler features a lunch-bucket gas tank, a chromed hard-hat roof, a forklift front bumper and a 500-h.p. Chrysler hemi-head engine with Triple GMC 671 blowers.

Hours later, the huge amphitheater, which once resounded to the agonies of the 1968 Democratic Convention, is quiet except for the occasional clang of a dropped wrench or the grunts of car owners as they push their treasures up the ramp into their trailers. An old porter pushes a broom through the thick litter of the International Speed Custom Cycle Auto Show.

"Dayton?" calls a driver from the cab of his camper. His buddy pauses before slamming shut the tailgate of his trailer. "Nope," he drawls. "I'm gonna take a breather. See you in Memphis."

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