Nebraska Furniture Mart Friends and Family Car Show raises money for the Dream Factory

I lived in Omaha as a kid, and Nebraska Furniture Mart was the place in town to buy furniture.  I remember my parents dragging me through there on occasion to look at couches or whatever.  The diminutive Mrs. B would be scooting through making sure everything was in order.

So big was the Nebraska Furniture Mart that even when my family moved to Kansas City, they still bought new furniture from the Omaha retailer.  And it wasn't just them, either.  Turns out that lots of Kansas Citians took advantage of the deals from the giant store.

So it wasn't a surprise that Nebraska Furniture Mart expanded to a second store location in Kansas City, Kan., when the Legends was constructed around the Kansas Speedway.  The Nebraska Furniture Mart is an anchor retailer in the area, and still the most popular spot in town for people to drag their kids to look at couches.

Anyway, I said all of that to say this: they also have a pretty nice annual car show there.  The Friends and Family Car Show, which was held last Saturday in the Furniture Mart's parking lot, managed to draw in 100 nice cars in spite of cloudy and threatening skies.  Even better, they raised $1,080 for the Dream Factory.

I had every intention of bringing my old truck to this show.  It had been stored in my sister's garage since before Christmas, and I went over the night before to get it cleaned up and ready to go.  It started up nice, but as I was rolling down her 30-degree banked driveway, I soon realized that the brake pedal went all the way to the floor.  Luckily, I also found out that the emergency brake still worked before any real damage was done.  But I wasn't able to get it to the show.

Instead, I brought my '96 Impala SS, which is really just my daily driver, but still looks relatively shiny.  Dad also brought his '61 Corvette, which is obviously more interesting to show-goers than my 15-year-old Chevy.  Way to steal my thunder, dad.

As usual, there were some really interesting cars there.  Several Modifieds that raced at Lakeside Speedway the night before made it out.  They had them all cleaned up so nice that you never would have known they were plowing through the mud and dirt just a few hours prior.

There was a really slick '84 Monte Carlo SS, a couple of late-'70s Firebirds, a black '66 Impala Super Sport coupe with red seats (my favorite color combo of all time!), and a nice variety of muscle cars and hot rods.  The selection was pretty diverse, which means there was something of interest for nearly every automotive taste.

One of the cars that caught my eye was a white '68 Camaro SS coupe.  It was a nice car, but I may not have thought that much about it if it hadn't had a very rare interior option.  This car was equipped with an unusual Strato-Bench Seat.  It also had a fold-down rear seat.  Most people seem to think buckets and consoles are the way to go, but I really think it's cool to see something different once in awhile.

Anyway, to see pictures of a good show that supported a good cause, look at the slideshow below.