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CLASSICTop: The
Howerton and
Moal “Tulsa”
Roadster.
Center: George
Poteet’s
winning 1936
Ford, the
“3-Penny”
Roadster,
was chosen
for its subtle
body mods,
high-powered
351 V- 8 , and
elegant lines.and drove it from Michigan to Pomona, with stops along
the way at such gearhead meccas as the Hot Rod Hill Climb
in Colorado and the Bonneville Salt Flats. “Besides,” Ashley
says, “We’ve already won this.” She’s not being philosophical.
The 2016 AMBR winner was Darryl Hollenbeck’s similarly
old-school ’32 Ford that Cory built.
Architect and car collector David Martin’s 1931 Ford
“Martin Special” won the 2018 AMBR award. Martin moves
past the cars with chrome and big fenders. “Street roadsters
that can’t go around a corner. All skinny tires and bad kingpin
alignment,” he notes. He likes the builds that are sleek and
racy, and he approves of the Taulberts’ car: “It’s balanced.
Stylistically totally consistent. No hiccups.” At Poteet’s car
he points out the well-matched shades of leather, paint, and
satin metal finishes. “I can imagine these guys out in the sun
for days trying to match hides and grays.”
He stops by the Moal and Howerton entry, a lowered, dark
blue ’32 Ford. “This is more the spirit, taking an 80-year-old
body and applying modern tech.” He points to a nearby CAD
drawing showing the car’s modified frame. “I like this one.”
When it’s pointed out that it looks a lot like his own car,
he laughs. “We all think what we like is what’s good for the
hobby.” Steve Moal comes over to say hi. We mention we’ve
heard his car might be one of the favorites, and he smiles.
“When I come to the show, I’ve done my job, and I have to
trust that the judges do theirs,” he allows.“Oh, it was pretty much down to two on load-in night,”
says Bobby Alloway, owner of Alloway’s Hot Rod Shop and
a longtime AMBR judge. Alloway and fellow judge Scott
Sullivan (also a famous hot rod builder) have taken a break
from examining the cars to talk about the judging process.
Remember the old points-based system? GNRS promoter
John Buck and several AMBR judges did away with it in
2011; now a nine-person panel of builders and customizers,
like Alloway and Sullivan, chooses the winner. Under the
new rules, cars must drive into the building under their own
power, and as they do, the judges scrutinize them.
“When they are moving, you can see how someone fits
in the car,” Alloway says. He moves his hands to illustrate
the idea of a driver sitting comically high, or uncomfortably
squashed in a car whose proportions are wrong. Once the
cars are in place for the show, raised up with doors open like
the wings of flagpole eagles, it can be hard to get an idea of
how they’d look on the ground. On that first evening, the
judges see them in motion. “The audience doesn’t see whatwe see,” Alloway says as Sullivan nods. “We get up close.” As
the cars grumble and whine, the judges hear the engines.
There is a different feel to a flathead, a hemi, a Chevy small-
block with supercharger. That, too, goes into their notes.
They have from Thursday night until Saturday night to
mull it over, and that evening they meet in a private room to
hash it out. “They warned me it was going to be a whole lot
of arguing,” Greg Stokes says on Sunday. “But by the end of
the night it was like, that’s it. That’s the one.” Stokes, a hot
rod builder from New Zealand, is judging the AMBR for the
first time, and he’s giddy about what an honor it is to have a
voice in deciding the winner. “They’ve been doing this award
since 1950,” he says. “The heritage it has. The history. The
evolution from Niekamp to [George] Barris to what we have
now, it’s all connected.”