As you can no doubt tell from the title of this post, we went to another car show over the weekend this time for Street Rods. We had found out about this one while we were at the Devonport Motor Show and we decided to check it out. Ulverstone is only about an hour from home so it was a cheap day out for us petrol-wise.

By definition, a street rod is an automobile of 1948 or earlier manufacture that has undergone some type of modernization to engine, transmission, interior refinements or any other modifications the builder desires. A street rod is to be driven to events under its own power and is to be used as a safe, nonracing vehicle for family enjoyment.

BY CHARLIE ROSE, /Autoweek
 AUG 13, 2007

I don’t know a great deal about Hot Rods and Street Rods. I know that they are custom built cars using vintage car bodies but with modifications. I did a little reading to discover that Hot Rods are built more for performance while Street Rods are built to drive on the road. I also came across the term Rat Rods which I had not heard before. These can be cars built from replica bodies that are more affordable than finding and restoring a vintage one. I believe that the term can also be used for any unfinished project car. I have included a few links at the end of this post with a bit more information.

I did not realise that the event was going to be such a big deal until Thursday last week. I was at the Visitor Centre in Wynyard for my volunteer shift and at various times during the day we were visited by groups of people wanting to see the vintage car collection. That’s not unusual, a lot of people come to see the Ransley collection as there are some quite rare old cars. However, these people were wearing Street Rod hats or T-shirts so they were obviously here for the Central Coast Nationals and had arrived a few days early. When I went out to do some errands, I did see a few Street Rods being driven around town. The Sunday event that we went to was the last day of a four-day event. The first couple of days participants did some local drives as a group, Saturday was a day at Symmons Plains Raceway. We knew about that but opted for Sunday’s Show and Shine as it was closer to home and we had been to Symmons Plains recently for Motorama anyway.

When we arrived, we started car spotting before we even got out of the car park. There were a lot of interesting cars to see which were not involved in the event. A couple of big American cars which Naomi photographed and we even spotted another Chrysler 300C driving past, one that we hadn’t seen before.

Inside we followed our own inclinations. Naomi wanted to photograph the cars she liked from the front and the back without any spectators blocking the view. That’s never easy at one of these events. She did take a lot of photos but hasn’t put them on her computer yet. Eventually I hope she will post some of them.

I am less bothered by a few people in the background as I know I can crop some of them out later. My photos are primarily intended for my blog posts and not for a record of the cars. I did do a bit of editing on the photos in this post. Mostly to remove objects like poles that were distracting and to brighten the sky a bit in some cases. It was a warm day but there were big black clouds looming and we expected it to rain. Luckily it didn’t until we got home.

This Fargo Ute interested me even though it was a bit rough looking and someone had obviously added the two “f’s” for a reason. I wanted to find out a bit more about the company as I had never heard of them. It turns out that in Australia they were sold by Chrysler.

Street Rods are fun to photograph because of the bright colour schemes even though they probably never appeared on the cars when they were originally built. I imagine that many of these cars were found rusting away or were built from parts so the fact that they are not authentic to their era doesn’t bother me as much as it would with a true vintage car.

I am rather fascinated by the chrome detailing on old cars. I love the great big grilles and the hood ornaments.

The cars seemed to be mostly Fords and Chevrolet’s but we did see a few Cadillacs and even a couple of Studebakers. We don’t see Studebaker’s often but Naomi recognised the car from watching the first Muppet Movie believe it or not. I always think of Fozzie Bear when I see one as well. We also saw a few old Holden’s and one very unusual build used the body of a Morris Minor. I should have got a picture of that. Towards the end of the day, we did spot one old Chrysler, the youngish owner was quite pleased when Naomi complimented him on it as it was still a work in progress.

While we were sitting resting our feet after covering about two thirds of the display area, we heard some people describing a similar event in Bendigo, Victoria. There were 1,300 entries. There were about 400 at Ulverstone I believe but I doubt we saw all of them. Apart from having tired feet and sore backs we came to a point where we just could not look at any more cars that day. I don’t know how we’d manage to look at 1,300 cars. However, we had a good time.

Further Reading:

• https://www.lelandwest.com/blog/listing.asp?2019/10/street-rods-vs-rat-rods-vs-hot-rods-whats-the-difference
• https://www.asrf.org.au/
• https://www.autoweek.com/news/a2057481/what-street-rod/
• https://www.motortrend.com/features/what-is-a-street-rod/
• https://collegeofcuriosity.com/2-24-any-color-so-long-as-its-black/
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fargo_Trucks