The neat U.S. Grant Motel is in Mattoon, Illinois, where we pulled in this pair of muscle cars. Firs

Envision a world where every car in sight is a hot rod or street machine and you've pictured life on the HOT ROD Power Tour(r). An explanation hyatt hotel for those of you who've not left your hovels for 15 years: HOT ROD maps a road trip through hyatt hotel seven cities and sets up party stops every night, title sponsor GM Performance Division makes it happen, and 3,000 to 4,000 cars join us each day to live the dream.
The road-trippers seen here are: 11-time Long Hauler(tm) Tim Williams hyatt hotel in the real-steel '37 sedan, Rock Ballard with his 10-year-project '69 Camaro in PPG Salsa Red with Marquez billet taillights, Bob and Glenda Haggard in their 42,000-mile Skylark that's a '70 Buick GSX clone, and Ben Olivas in his '70 Mach 1 in Grabber Blue.
This year, the route took us on a 1,370-mile trek from the Kickoff Party hosted by Painless Performance in Newton, Iowa, to the Surf City Garage party in Mobile, hyatt hotel Alabama, June 5-12. An amazing 4,850 cars and an estimated 76,500 spectators participated during the week, and 2,570 people in 1,512 cars went all the way to become official Long Haulers(tm). Did any of that junk break down along the way? You bet. The GM Performance hyatt hotel Division Motor Medics wrenched on 105 cars at the cruise hyatt hotel nights and supplied hundreds more parts and answers, and there were countless roadside repairs handled by gangs of hot rodders pitching in to help newfound friends.
The badge of honor from Power Tour(r) is braving that risk of breakage and road rash to make the journey, and the reward is discovering backwoods America, participating in an event like no other, creating a new gearhead family, and knowing you're one of the folks who really uses a project car instead of just talking about it.
Horribly, Jamey Anderson lost his life during Power Tour(r) in an on-road collision hyatt hotel where a nonparticipant crossed the centerline and hit Jamey's '69 Camaro head on. His 15-year-old son, Dalton, was also in the car and is currently recuperating from critical injuries. hyatt hotel This was a first for Power Tour(r) and stunning to everyone in attendance.
Jamey was a CAD expert in civil engineering and founded his own firm in Florida in 1997. He was also a dedicated gearhead and drag racer. He left behind a large family, the most immediate of which is wife, Gail, son Dalton, and daughters Dakota, Stephanie, and Rachelle Ferguson Smith.
At SEMA 2009, the HOT ROD staff had the bright idea to get some real show cars to prove their merit by joining us for the full length of the Power Tour(r), driving the cars every mile. We claimed we'd also award bonus points in the editors'-choice shootout if they would hit the chassis dyno, the dragstrip, and the autocross. Ridetech, a company that always promotes real drives and real automotive whippings, jumped up to sponsor the Challenge.
The winner of the first-ever HOT ROD/Ridetech hyatt hotel Power Tour(r) Challenge. Goolsby Customs in Bessemer, hyatt hotel Alabama, built this '67 Chevelle hyatt hotel for William Shores. The car carries no huge surprises, but is very well executed with its tri-power ZZ502, Tremec TKO trans, and full Roadster Shop chassis. The car won over the crowd and the editors because it was driven loud and hard every day, never saw a trailer, and competed in all the performance challenges, earning a narrow victory over the absurdity of the diesel Chevelle and the spectacular finish of the Magnuson roadster.
We invited 26 cars, and just 12 accepted. By the time we were getting ready to get on the plane, that number had dropped to 8. When we arrived, just five invitees had actually shown up. Then one had to leave mid-Tour, leaving just four cars braving the Challenge. Those four cars and their owners/builder/drivers deserve a round of applause for showing all the rest of them how it's supposed hyatt hotel to be done. It's our hope that their deeds will shame more builders in to actually using their creations next year. Why build it if you can't drive it?
Dennis Overholser of Painless Performance has been long known to Power Tour(r) participants as the good guy in the wiring biz and as the Kickoff Party sponsor. His latest creation is the Truckster, a roadster built from a '70s Ford pickup cab. The flathead is fed by one of the company's three-jug EFI units. Dennis drove the Truckster admirably but put it in the trailer during the big rain day and did not participate in the performance events.
The Painless Performance Kickoff Party was held at Iowa Speedway in Newton, Iowa, and that was also the location of the biggest day-one drivers' meeting crowd we've ever seen. An estimated 900 cars were on site-more than at most car shows you'll ever attend.
This is a cool story: Patrick Riebes came all the way from Switzerland and picked up his '68 GTO that his friend Jaimie Sokolski had built for him in just a week in his Crystal, Wisconsin, garage. Before the first night was over, an axletube popped loose in the 10-bolt rear. The guys ratchet-strapped it together to make the drive to Springfield, Illinois, where the GMPD Motor Medics zapped it back together.
Spectators often line the streets and yards of rural towns to watch the rolling car show drive by, but Keokuk, Iowa, was a standout, with the town going all out to make a huge Power Tour(r) party out of the entire main drag.
Barber shop and pocket billiards! Awesome. The '56 Chevy seen here in Tennessee, Illinois, is Scott Kinney's fooler: a retro-looking ride that's oddly stuffed with a GM LS-series V-8. Look for a feature story in the Aug. '10 issue of Car Craft.
The father and sons crew of Tom, Levi, and Caleb Smith from McKinney, Texas, rolled all the way with us in their '72 LeMans Sport turned into a Judge clone and stuffed with 455 power. The inside of the little eatery in Macomb, Illinois, looked like someone simply shut the door one day in about 1982 and never came back.
Steve Fisk Jr. was caught in front of this wicked-cool, old Standard Oil building in Macomb, Illinois, with his '54 Chevy five-window truck. It has a second-gen Firebird front clip, a 350 Chevy and TH400, and 2.40 gears out back. It got 20 mpg on the highway!
The neat U.S. Grant Motel is in Mattoon, Illinois, where we pulled in this pair of muscle cars. First-time Power Tourers(r) Joe Loucks and Lance Morris were in Joe's '70 Camaro packed with a 383, a four-speed, and 3.73 gears. Also first-timing it were Allen and Ione Williams, who dug this Bahama Yellow '69 Road Runner out of a soybean field in Ozark, Alabama, where it had been rotting for 30 years. Allen remade the body in his garage and added a 451 stroker and a four-speed.
At the Bowling Green, Chattanooga, and Birmingham stops, Comp Cams hosted the Engine Builder Duel, presented by Snap-on. Teams of touring gearheads were challenged to completely assemble and fire up a small-block Chevy in record time. Some of the lowest times were around 20 minutes. See EngineBuilderDuel.com
The Alabama hyatt hotel Gang is the sort of informal club that's becoming more common on Power Tour(r). It started as just a group of guys cruising together from Alabama, but they have helped so many people hyatt hotel during past events that the club now includes a pack of non-Alabamians, and they all see each other just once a year on Power Tour(r). We gathered the Gang's hyatt hotel Stingrays for a photo, but many other kinds of cars are included.
It was a flashback for the HOT ROD staff to return to the DuQuoin State Fairgrounds, site of the bangin' Street Machine Nationals of the late '80s and early '90s. The '32 Ford Downs body in front of the Fairgrounds' cool sign is Curt Erwin's LT1-powered, Downs-bodied unit from Benton, Illinois. The heavily customized '40 Merc convertible was done by Fast Eddie Lepold from Fairview Heights, Illinois. Among the body mods are fenders and quarters raised 3 inches, a sectioned hood, and the whole top moved forward 5 inches.
Scott and Chris Zimmerman from Rockford, Illinois, were on their honeymoon, having been married May 15 at another car show. They left her '56 Dodge wagon at home in favor of Scott's '69 Mustang that he's owned since 1972 and that now has a Paxton-blown 347 and a T5 trans. They are close friends with Glen and Kristin Ricker, also from Rockford, in the '70 Chevelle with a 454 and a 700-R4. (Kristin's own '70 Mustang can barely be seen in last year's Power Tour(r) lead photo.) More friends from the road are Jim and Cathy Moldaschel from Mankato, Minnesota, on their sixth Power Tour(r), most of them in this loaded 340 'Cuda with factory air, cruise, and power windows.
Mid America hyatt hotel Motorworks in Effingham, Illinois, has been host to Power Tour(r) lunch stops many times. This scene represents about a hundredth of the cars that were scattered on the huge campus of this Corvette and VW mail-order palace. The turnout was enormous, with roughly 3,800 cars through the gate.
The Holley-sponsored stop in Bowling Green, Kentucky, was at the local airport, where the president is a gearhead. Holley was hosting rides in a Ford Trimotor, and photographer Wes Allison hyatt hotel hopped into a biplane to get this shot of the overall scene.
Holley brought out its new fleet of project cars designed hyatt hotel to promote the company's new line of parts for LS-series engine swapping. This '67 Chevy shop truck runs an LS3 disguised as a big-block. See all the Holley cars at the Holley hyatt hotel LS Fest, presented by HOT ROD, in Bowling Green September 10-12; see HolleyLSFest.com
This cool old grocery store lies somewhere off the official route in the backwoods of Alabama. It's where we found Ken Nabozny and Kevin Yinger from Jackson, Michigan, in Ken's '71 Camaro hyatt hotel with a Summit Racing 350; Curt Tigges from Ames, Iowa, in his primered '71 Buick Skylark with a 455 and a 200-4R trans and riding on Coys wheels; and John and Cheryl Britton from Atlanta first-timing it in their 13-year-project '71 Buick GS 350 that got 3.08 gears and a fresh radiator hyatt hotel for the trip. Good thing. It was H-O-T down South.
Bumpers hyatt hotel Drive-In in Smithville, Tennessee, was the perfect retro lunch stop. The '46 Ford up front belongs to Russ and Susie To