19th Annual Vintage Fabrication car show reveals a serious shop hidden in a vintage Mobil station

I was in time-killing mode Saturday afternoon, so I looked at the old HMC weekly calendar and found out that the Vintage Fabrication open house was taking place in Independence. I wasn’t really expecting that much, but I jumped in the Impala and headed east.

As it turns out, I’m glad I went. Vintage Fabrication is actually a pretty cool place, and the turnout was surprisingly robust. This was the 19th year for this event, and obviously word has spread during that time.

For someone who loves to build hot rods, this place is a little slice of heaven. The shop is literally located in owners Bobby, Karen, and Bruce Schumacher’s back yard. And it really is a neat shop. From the outside, it looks like a vintage Mobil gas station, complete with old signage and pumps. But once you go through the garage doors, you realize this is quite a bit more.

Inside, you find an immaculate 10,000-sq/ft, two-level workspace that is equipped to handle everything from metal fabrication to woodworking. They even have a little hot rod parts shop. And there are several projects in the works throughout.

Of course, I was there for the car show, and there were several nice things to look at there. I fell in love with this ’38 Ford rumble seat roadster. Now I will admit that usually ’38 Fords aren’t at the top of my list, but this was an exception. It was a mild hot rod, with the requisite flathead hop-up parts and Naugahyde-covered seat. But what really made it stand out was the obvious age of the build. I can’t say for sure, but if I had to bet on how long this car has been like this, I’d guess it was an early ‘60s build. It wasn’t just someone’s interpretation on what a cool early hot rod should be—this was the real deal.

Another car that was hard to ignore was the sprint car in which the late Greg Weld won the 1963 Knoxville Nationals. I believe this car has been on display at the National Sprint Car Hall of Fame and Museum in Knoxville, Iowa, so it was pretty exciting to see it here. Weld was a prominent Kansas City racer who made several starts in the Indy 500. He also started Kansas City-based Weld Wheels, and owned I-70 Speedway in the 1980s.

By the time I got to the show, things were slowly starting to wind down. I still managed to take 159 pictures, though, amid some very harsh setting sun. If you squint real hard like I did, you can probably see them in the slideshow below. Or, click this link for a better version of the slideshow.