Sunday, September 5, 2010

2010 Greaserama Car Show was the polar opposite of the mainstream car show across town, and all the more fun for it

Labor Day weekend brings two pretty big car shows to the Kansas City area. The Goodguys Mid-Western Nationals at Kansas Speedway is the one everyone hears about, but there is another less-publicized gathering that's gaining some big traction.

The Greaserama Car Show is sort of the "anti-Goodguys" event. Instead of the shiny chrome and liquid-perfect paint that you would expect to see out at Kansas Speedway, there is more of a concentration of rust, primer, and, for lack of a better term, patina. One of the rules printed on the flyer is, "no billet crap."

These guidelines bring out an interesting assortment of cars and trucks to say the least. One of the underlying themes is "traditional" hot rods, and there are some of them out there that follow that formula to the letter of the law. A few of them were already hot rods when "traditional" was considered "modern."

On the other hand, there are also some real nasty things in among the crowd. They're more caricatures of traditional than real traditional. What they lack in authenticity, they make up for in iron crosses, skull heads, and welding rod.

Luckily, this is not as much a cruising event as it is a "hang out in the drive-in and watch movies" type shindig. And to that end, everyone has a really fun time together whether they have an awesome custom or a big pile of poo. And while more creative energy goes into building some of these cars than at any other car show you'll ever go to, this event is less about the cars and more about the camaraderie. If you don't go there expecting to have a good time, you might as well not go at all.

In addition to the cars, they were also playing twisted movie selections like Grindhouse, there were some pretty good Rockabilly-type live bands, and there were several artists and pinstripers on hand that would appeal to the Greaserama crowd.

The drive-in was cram-packed full of cars, and it certainly looked like a very successful show from my vantage point. And while the Goodguys show is obviously bigger and more mainstream, if you want to know where the people were that were having the most fun, you didn't need to look any further than the weird and proud of it Greaserama.

Check out the slideshow below for a sample of the good, the not so good, and the downright ugly from the 2010 Greaserama. With some 200 pictures, this should give you a good idea what the show had to offer.


1 comment:

  1. Photos do a nice job showing the diversity of autos. There were also a lot of cool bicycles! It was a GREAT time.

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