Event Coverage Detroit Autorama 2025

See my earlier post and the follow up response it received....

 

To that point...I guess a guy I know has the 1969 Ridler award winner in Tulsa.

 

Yes, he also has a couple others that he had built in recent years. Great guy with a pretty cool collection in Tulsa. He opened up his collection to us one year when we stopped there for a stop on the Oklahoma Hot Rod Hundred. He let about 500 folks wander through his place. I was trying to find my pictures of that car from that day, but can't seem to find them...

 

Rick, I can't fault you for having doubts about next year, 88 bucks is a lot of money for one day. HRP

 

I feel ya, we’ve gone every year since 2008 and to your point it’s definitely feeling sparse these days.

I saw a whooooole bunch of foxbodys…

But as aforementioned, it’s the people that we keep going back for. That and the food

that said, if you want to go to a show that will knock your socks off with the quality of cars and people the ROC is 100% the ticket!!!

 

It wasn't just the money. Although sometimes I think I might rather spend $88 on my project than to look at other people's cars. LOL
It's also the dwindling numbers. Kinda disappointing in recent times.
And I wasn't feeling 100%
Achin' too much to enjoy it.

We'll see about next year.

 

I agree with this. Chuck Miller did a phenomenal job of putting together what may have been the best Cavalcade of Customs display in decades. 30 outstanding custom cars, many of which had never been shown either upstairs in Detroit, or at the show at all. However, outside of that display, the show was very light in comparison to other years. That goes for everything, not just traditional rods and customs. Sure there were some stand-outs. But generally speaking, there were fewer vendors, fewer places advertising, fewer cars, and lower quality vehicles than has been typical of this show.

That was especially the case for the basement, which was by far the weakest showing I can remember. Again, there were some nice cars downstairs and certainly a few stand-outs, especially among the award winners. But as a whole, the quality of the cars in the basement was significantly down.

The cars are not the main reason I go to this show, at least not anymore. I go to see my friends and the cars loosely arrange us. Del ( @hotdamn ) , Dustin ( @sinticket ), Scott (@Lucky77 ) and his wife Chelsea... and many, many more. It's just an awesome trip to hang with great people I don't get to see as much as I'd like to. This year I took my mom (who's never been to the show) to the Henry Ford, my wife and daughter later flew in and joined us for the Red Wings/Blue Jackets game at Little Caesar's Arena. We took a tour of the Guardian Building. We brought our skates and ice skated around Campus Martius Park in the middle of downtown. We went to the Michigan Science Center. We marveled at all of the new development in the city and ate ourselves silly at all of the new restaurants that have opened.

I'd agree it's an expensive weekend. If the show continues to trend downward, maybe the weekend will just have to be replaced with a vacation to go see friends.

 

Looked for you, @57JoeFoMoPar
The Olds was awesome.

 

Thanks man! Bummed we couldn't link up, hopefully next year!

 

The big question is what/how to improve the show? Chuck Miller goes to several shows throughout the year and finds the cars he wants in the Cavalcade. Outside of the Ridler-class cars, the show is dependent on mostly local people sending entries. That’s why there are so many muscle and drag cars. There are more of them than the cool old stuff we like. Someone with the show would have to make a considerable effort to find more cool old stuff.

 

My buddy (Erick Jizkra) won TWO awards for his '31 coupe, including the Faye Butler award for best metal work!
I don't care who you are, THAT'S cool!

 

No. Here's the winners by year. https://autorama.com/awards/ridler-award/

 

I miss Denise's after party

 

Thank you for the pics
we arrived at the show 11:30 Saturday morning
my brother 82 petered out around 2:45 in the afternoon
so
We missed much of the show
next year we are planning on staying a day or two so we can see the whole show

 

I just noticed Mark cleared it up after I did some digging. The sign by the Red 34 is a touch misleading. After zooming in to read it, you find out the owner of the coupe did ,in fact, win the first Riddler award but with his dragster.
My fault for any confusion

 

Technically, isn't that a Competition Coupe, not a dragster?