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By the end of day one at the 2019
Grand National Roadster Show
(GNRS) in Pomona, California, we
had a pretty good idea of what the
show’s famous AMBR award is not.
It’s not America’s Roadster You’d
Most Like to Drive Home. It’s not America’s Most Bad Ass
Roadster, or America’s Roadster You’d Most Like to Own,
or America’s Most Well-Restored Roadster. Every time, after
explaining at least one thing that the AMBR was not, the
person delivering the explanation—be it a judge, car owner,
or fellow wide-eyed spectator—would look around at the 14
cars in the running for the 2019 competition and say, “It’s
America’s Most Beautiful Roadster.”
In one corner, a ’32 Ford the color of a Chesapeake Bay
retriever, with a trim little fabric top pulled down over its
windshield like a newsboy’s cap. Behind it, a wine-red ’33
Ford, with fenders curved and stretched like bias-cut silk.
On the far side of the room, the lone non-Ford, a ’24 Buick
Touring, bold and stately in red, black, chrome, and wood.
They sat high on mirrored plinths, sparkling under the
show lights and reflecting each other in paint so deep it
should come with a life vest. But which was most beautiful?
What makes a roadster beautiful, and how is that decided?
At this point in hot-rodding history, 70 years since Al
Slonaker first organized the car show that became GNRS—
and 69 years since the first AMBR award was handed to Bill
Niekamp’s track nose ’29 Ford at the 1950 event—we might
need to explain more than just the markers for roadster
pulchritude. What is a roadster, and why are we still judging
their beauty in 2019?
Although the definition of “roadster” has expanded in
automotive circles to cover just about any small convertible,
to an early hot-rodder it was a two-door, open-topped car
with no side windows and a windscreen separate from the
body. A four-door meeting the same criteria was a phaeton.
When gearheads first started hopping up engines and
stripping bodies in pursuit of speed, Ford models were
the most popular to use, and when the competition went
from dry lakes and dragstrips to the show field in 1950, the
rules for America’s Most Beautiful Roadster were based off
those roofless, windowless Fords. Today, you can enter any
American make, or even a custom one-off, but it needs to
trace back—at least in appearance—to those pre-1937 cars.
