Depending on how you looked at it, the 2008 Hot Rod & Restoration Trade Show was a success and maybe somewhat of a dud. First the good: as it was our first time exhibiting at the hot rod show, we weren't sure what to expect. But in the first two hours of the show on Friday, we handed out approximately half of all the magazines we had with us. That's when I started to get a little excited and scared. If this pace were to keep up, we would run out of magazines before the end of the first day! The thoughts that ran through my head ran something like -- what would I do for the next day and a half? We couldn't very well fold up and go home. But my worries of running out of magazines subsided as show traffic slowed. We did run out of magazines on Saturday afternoon, so we will definitely bring more the next time.
Another positive was getting the chance to speak to some of our readers and show off our new website. There are usually a few engine builders who will stump me with technical information and articles we've run in past issues and how can they find them. But this year we finally had an answer. I was able to log-on to our website from the booth and actually search our archives, something unheard of with our old site (R,I.P. old site). With our old site, I'd still be searching for these articles, but it was a breeze to help people find what they were looking for with the new site..
On Thursday night my publisher and I made plans to meet early the next morning in the lobby of the hotel and head over to the opening breakfast. I was not expecting a big crowd to be perfectly honest. Boy were we surprised -- the place was jam-packed! We located a table and settled in for what ended up being a 2 hour and 30 minute tribute to Alex Xydias, founder of So-Cal Speed Shop and recipient of this year's Robert E. Peterson Lifetime Achievement Award. Xydias' amusing anecdotes were the high point of the day as he and his friends (Vic Edelbrock, Barry Meguiar and others) relived the glory days of hot rodding and his So-Cal speed shop. Included in the presentation were great photos and video footage taken by Xydias himself of such famous cars as the Belly Tank and So-Cal Streamliner, which he set a speed record with, becoming the first person to go over 200 mph.
Friday night in was the Industry Reception sponsored by our friends at Egge Machine Company as it done for several years. I must say one of my personal high points was drinking the free beer in my Egge collectible mug (if only could have stayed long enough to get full set of mugs!). The reception was great, and all never forgive myself for missing out on the root beer floats, but everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves. One attendee said that he had driven two hours just so he could see the movies that Alex Xydias had made of his racing days and during the time he worked for Peterson Publishing. It was great to see some of the old footage of what looked like the glory days of racing, but I also couldn't help but notice there were more people reliving the past than were looking to the future. A look around the room and I was definitely one of the "youngsters" in the crowd, and I ain't no spring chicken. So I started to wonder where were all the young people in the industry?
One obstacle that seemed fairly obvious was the fact that hot rods as we know them are generally from a bye-gone era. The young people today know more about computers and Hondas than about hot rods from the depression or muscle cars from American Graffiti. So it seems the industry has to do more to bring in young people, such as "Bring a kid to a Car Show" that ARMO promotes to help kick start interest in cars at an early age. On Saturday ARMO held a panel discussion titled, "Who's trainging our workforce for tomorrow and what are they training them?" The discussion was emceed by Egge Machine's Ernie Silvers, who is also Chairman of the ARMO council. According to one panel member, there aren't as many qualified candidates for tech schools because many potential students are enrolled in 4-year college programs.
By mid-day on Saturday, the show was nearly empty as many of the attendees had already headed home. The show was small enough to cover in a few hours so most people seemed to only be visiting for a few hours. One of the more difficult things for us was trying to find actual engine builders. I saw many name tags that said they were engine builders when in fact they were just using a friends company for a cover to get in the show. There were some engine builders though, and even some young engine builders. University of Northwest Ohio's E85 Team stopped by our booth to chat about how they did. We will report more about that in a future issue. The kids were near graduation and very fired up about being part of the industry. So as I packed up and drove home, I had a good feeling that hot rodding will live on for another generation. There may be a few more electronics involved but it will still be a hot rod.