Why in the world would anyone drive North from Tennessee to Ohio just to drive 2000 miles West to the SEMA show in Las Vegas, Nevada? I will be doggone if it wasn’t cold enough to spit snow this morning in Ohio! We all met up at first light to leave from Dynamat headquarters north of Cincinnati. It was cold. It’s dang cold in Ohio in November! But we do have a RodTop on our car but obviously no windwings or windows so the cold wind whips on in! Steve Moal and Brian Brennan are driving topless! Real men!
PJ Burchett and crew (from Knoxville, TN) kept us entertained with their 30 coupe and scratch built TomCat roadster.
Honest Mike and I got a quick tour of Dynamat before we took off. They make sound deadening insulation mats for installing in Hot Rods. We sell their stuff at Honest Charley. Good stuff, cool place.
Ken (Dutch) Fenical of Posies from Hummelstown, PA put this tour together and organized the route. His car was a very ambitious project. He fab’d his own frame then narrowed, shaved, chopped and lengthened a slant back 46 Chev Coupe body into an underslung highboy with a Roush supercharged inline six. The task was herculean. He didn’t get the electronics done (wiring) so he trailered his car. He is really catchin some crap over it but being a good sport about it. "Trailering a hot rod on the Driven Dirty Tour….dang…it even sounds bad!"
After the unofficial official start of the Driven Dirty Tour, we headed North (Wait! It gets colder when you go North!) about 50 miles to Brookville, Ohio where Brookville Bodies of Steel are made. We got a great look at where Ray, Chuck and Kenny from Brookville work their magic making beautiful steel bodies. We also sell Brookville bodies at Honest. After a brief tour we headed West on I-70 with Indianapolis in our sights for lunch.
We stopped for gas after about an hour in small town Indiana. Because we had several hot rods lined up for their "petrol fix" I moved our Double Exposure Deuce away from the pumps to the edge of the lot so someone else would get a turn at gas. Coffee, take a leak, chatted a few minutes then Honest Mike n I walk back to the roadster. The others were finishing up w gas when Mike pointed to a yellow n white blotch on the hood of the car and commented something about a bug making the ultimate sacrifice. By the time he walks to the pump island n back with a cleaning towel, there were probably 12 to 15 yellow blotches which directs Mike’s undivided attention to the hundreds of birds perched on the. Billboard over our Deuce. Day one of the Driven Dirty Tour and we have already been crapped on!
We meet up with Johnny Capels, Chairman of the Board of USAC Racing, the United States Auto Club headquartered in Indy. Johnny has a really cool deuce with front and rear sway bars, a USAC inspired fuel injected flathead with lots of trick stuff. He says he built it from an old racer’s perspective since he’s not a hotrodder but a racer! It was cool car. We had lunch with him and Jackie Howerton, who is a well known racing car builder and fabricator from Indianapolis.
My sweet wife calls the Great Race thing we do in the summer an excuse to "eat our way across America". This trip is shaping up the same way. After 250 effortless and problem free miles to St Louis we checked in to our humble hotel only to rush to eat again! BBQ n good conversation! As long as its about cars n bikes n things.
As I type this blog post out on my crackberry Honest Mike is down at the car carrying for our new baby n putting her to bed by pulling the cover over her. She has to take us closer to Las Vegas tomorrow. Double Exposure Deuce. You gotta love it!
From the road,
Corky
