International Car Show
By Lauri Rector (Trail Tales May 2008)
Well, it took two years, but Motor Trend finally invited us back to the International Car Show to be, once again, an outside display that patrons can view for free. Jeff and I were able to get in on the last one – where, if you remember, they were asking for “rock crawling genre” vehicles from the club. This year they just wanted club vehicles and didn’t make that specification. So, anyone that didn’t have any thing else to do and were able to check their email fast enough (sorry, but they only gave me a week to commit to 20 vehicles), was able to join in. We had a good turn out from the club, and Frank Whiston got some of his friends to fill in.
Here are the people that had their vehicle on display: Jeff Rector, Frank Whiston (both the elder and the younger), Jan Waugh, Brandon Roby, Phil Rodacy, Justin Simenson, Tom Hurt, Andy Hurt, Paul Thompson, Rance Cochrane, Jack Sierra, Rick Sierra’s friend – LeRoy (Rick’s Jeep had issues, so his friend filled in at the last minute), Terry Ellis, Nate and Neil Schuit, either Rob Campbell or Jeff Tunell (not sure which one it was at the writing of this article). I think that we were shy by 3 vehicles, but I don’t know that they noticed.
We were able to use our new 50th anniversary club banner for the 2nd time since its purchase about a month ago. We were going to use a computer as the scrap books are getting to be very fragile. However, you couldn’t see the screen. Luckily Justin brought a print out of the book and we had it on a table, along with the posters for the Summer Quarterly event – with info on the trails and some registrations (thanks to Frank for thinking of bringing these items). Another BIG THANKS needs to go out to Glenn Bontly. He does so much as the editor and webmaster, but also, when he can’t sleep, will get up and redesign club’s brochure!!! He got them printed and then got them to Frank. So, we had really cool club brochure to hand out to people that were interested in our club.
We didn’t count, but there were many of them. But, as you can see from some of the pictures, the display looked really good, especially with the way they were parking on other display vehicles tires. One person even commented that our display was a lot better than the ones inside the building. Signage by the car show and our banner identified who we were to those that cared to take notice. Some old friends spotted us and stopped by and said hi (John Orban and I can’t remember the name of the other person) and club members (Mark Wolf, the Brady’s and the Sell’s). All of us really enjoyed the other car show – the one with a Lotus and Porsche and lots of other things that you could sit in.
There were so many cars that you could just get in and sit down and Frank Whiston, the elder’s, JK looks so new, that he finally had to lock the driver’s door. Everyone that saw it, went up to it and tried to open it. Back to the vehicles inside - there was a Nissan Skyline that does 0-60 in 3.3 seconds – its brakes were bigger than my tires!!! We all enjoyed talking and commenting on the new models and the concept cars and the things we saw inside (such as the guy who walked up to a concept car that said “DON’T TOUCH” and the door handle fell off in his hand and the 6 foot, 350 lb guy getting out of the Lotus). Another conversation we had was somewhat thought provoking and fairly sad….the future of 4-wheeling. We decided that with gas prices the way they were going, the travel management issues with the forests and BLM – that what we are doing today could be what club does in the next 50 years. Go and park on each other tires and spend the day standing around and talking about the olden days when we would go out and find rocks to drive over. Wonder if there will be new model and concept cars for us to check out as well?
