40th Victorian Hot Rod Show

 

 

The Vic Hot Rod Show is the longest running event of its type in Australia with the first event being held in 1964. But wait! I hear you say... that would make the 2005 show the 41st running of the show. Since its inception, the Vic Hot Rod Show has ALWAYS been held at Melbourne's stunning Exhibition Building. Many years ago the city decided to replace the floors and the work coincided with the show dates which are always on the Australia Day (Jan 26th for you furriners) long weekend.

This was the the first time I had the chance to get to the show and apart from being the 40th, it was also the 20th and final show of good friend Roy Fregon. I must say it was a great show and although I had seen many of the cars before on my various travels, to see them in the beautiful setting of the Exhibition Building was really something else. Well done Roy, you'll be missed.

 

Here's the entry to the show. The outside of the building is impressive, but it gets even better inside.

Obviously the Model A Tudor parked out front is a glass body judging by the 'TUPAWR' plates. Good to see an owner with a sense of humour.

One of the great things about the location is the parking area out front. This year that had it fenced off so that only cool cars could get in.

Basically you get two car shows for the price of one. Advantage is, the outside one is always changing, so it's a great idea to pop out every couple of hours to see what's new.

As well as being a great location for the Hot Rod Show for the last 41 years, the Exhibition Building was also the location of the first meeting of the Australian Parliament back in 1901.
Pride of place was given to Richard Dabbs' awesome '61 Cadillac. I had recently done a feature story on the car for Street Machine magazine, so it was good to see it in the flesh again.
Great metalflake paintjob and pearl white tuck & roll are all this car needed. There's not much else done to it, but man! It's Oh So Good.

Kandy Kad. Of course it is.

The scallops are a straight white, but pinstriped in a metallic silver by Richard and Matt Egan. Matt also helped out with the scallop layout and laid on the candy metalflake.

Parked alongside Richard's car was Claudio Janczer's Commodore ute. I gotta say, for a Commondoore, it's pretty nice.
Darryl Scholz's Model A pickup is a very simple, but very nice piece of work. I do believe it won 'Street Rod of the Year' a few years back and it still looks a million dollars.
Not sure what the relevance of the 'Pasadena Pickup' moniker is. Maybe it was bought from a little old lady...

This car may be familiar to some of you. Originally built by Phil Pavicich in Perth, it was sold just before the show to Haydn Nobelius.

It's an all steel US bodied coupe and is a lovely car.

With a 270 cube Dodge 'Red Ram' Hemi, Torqueflite and 9-inch, Nobby has got himself one hell of a nice car.

I'm sure he'll look after it just fine.