Posts Tagged ‘automania’

Automania 2012

Monday, July 2nd, 2012

Another Automania weekend has come & gone. We attended the show on Friday night and took a pile of photos, then went out again on the Sunday Garage Tour and hit a couple of the sites. One of the more outstanding cars I saw on the Garage Tour was this ’72 Jaguar XKE in the Schulte Automotive/Executive Touch restoration shop. The restoration looked to be very near completion; some pieces were missing from the intake, but the paint and the interior were absolutely gorgeous.

Another notable car was this hand-built dwarf ’49 Mercury. I first saw it being driven through the crowd up 10th Street & turn onto Main Ave., probably trying to find a spot to park & display the rod. For an idea of its size, that’s a standard-size US license plate on the rear bumper, and that’s yours truly standing off to the side in the khaki shorts & black shirt; the roof was barely up to my beltline.

According to the placard on the car’s window, it uses a Toyota drivetrain. The guy who was in it was no dwarf, and it looked pretty snug inside. So very cool!

A great big steaming pile of generally unorganized photos after the jump… 140-some photos taken by two different cameras and three different photographers, just to provide a little more variety (and unfortunately a little redundancy as well.) I might end up labeling some of them, but don’t hold your breath waiting for that. Enjoy!
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Automania 2009 Mega-Gallery!

Thursday, June 18th, 2009

The 2009 Automania show is history, and it was a good one. I got there early yesterday (about 4:30) hoping to see a lot of the cars rolling in, but most of them were already in place when I arrived. A couple of the owners said they were there about 2:00!

There were a lot of cars there, and a lot of people. So many people that it was tough to get a decent photo of some of the cars. That’s the bothersome thing about a big show like this; that many cars draws that many people, but if there weren’t as many people, there wouldn’t be as many cars worth seeing. So I guess I’ll put up with it!

A lot of the cars that were there had been at previous shows, like the ’54 Ford Delivery & matching boat-topped camper, and the over-the-top awesomeness of the ’57 Pontiac Chieftain… I had a chance to talk with the owner of the Ford Delivery rig, and will put up some more details about that and other notable cars later. But for now, I’ll quit typing and just hit ‘publish’ to get these photos out there. I hope the page works ok; the admin side is a little balky, which probably means WordPress doens’t much like having to deal with 284 images. Oh well; here’s hoping!

Enjoy!

Click through to see all the photos, but beware; there are a lot of them! (more…)

Automania 2009 Is Coming!

Thursday, June 11th, 2009

Had a nice surprise in my inbox this morning; I subscribe to the Hemmings Motor News eWeekly newsletter, and today’s edition had a top-line writeup on the Sioux Falls Automania Show coming up next week! Sweet!

Not sure what to think of the bits about having to “chip harder when it comes to breaking out of winter” and the “Crisp weather” reference — the weather is usually pretty warm for Automania — but I guess the misconceptions about the weather in the upper Great Plains die hard. I read the Hemmings Auto Blogs pretty regularly; one can only hope that they at least send someone out for a writeup and some pictures. If not, maybe I can lend them mine, or better yet, get paid for it? (hint, hint!)

But anyway, Automania is less than a week away. As Caleb says (way too often), I can’t wait!

South Side Performance At Automania

Friday, June 27th, 2008

It’s been a busy week for me since the Automania show last Wednesday, but there were a few things of interest there that I wanted to share (Ian & I went to the show, and between the two of us, snapped over 300 photos; some are worth seeing, some not so much, but if you’re interested in the whole schmere, you can have a peek here.)

There’s always stuff being shown by different retailers and garages and whatnot, but the display put on by South Side Performance was pretty incredible; I was a bit flabbergasted by what these guys pulled off. Not only did they have a bevy of hot cars to show off, but they also brought out their CNC Water Jet, set it up on the street, and set about cutting aluminum key fobs to give away.

The fact that this machine is able to cut metal (up to 8 inches thick) with water and agate is amazing enough, but for these guys to tear the machine down, pull it out of the shop, haul it — and a rented compressor & generator — downtown, set it up on the street (with a chance of rain in the forecast) and hook it all up is over the top.

As far as I can tell, South Side Performance has no web presence (yet) but there are a number of YouTube videos of various cars on their AWD dyno. Here is a little video tour of the shop, which is nice as I’ve driven by the place dozens of times but have never been inside:


(YouTube link)

I might have to get to know these guys a little better.

Automania 2008 Is On For Tonight!

Wednesday, June 18th, 2008

Yes! The Night of the Hot Rods has finally arrived!

Automania is tonight, June 18, 2008. The weather forecast looks excellent, so you can bet that I’ll be there, dragging the boys around (or maybe the other way round) snapping pictures of everything they’re not interested in. They’ll likely be gawking at the shiny Ferraris, Lamborginis and Mustangs while I’m looking at the rat rods and classics. No matter; it’ll be fun.

Last year I snapped a few photos of the marvelous rig, It’s Five-O’Clock Somewhere, and posted them on this site. Neatorama picked it up and posted on it; from there it got linked all over the place. Not sure if the Bortschellers will be back this year or not, but I’ll be sure to shake his hand if he is.

This year Tommy James and The Shondells will be playing… I’ve already got Crimson & Clover running through my head!