The Detroit Autorama for 2009 enters its 57th year and is titled the Murray's/O'Reilly's Autorama presented by Meguiar's and once again is held at Cobo Hall in downtown Detroit. The show began in 1953 at the University of Detroit Field House, long before Cobo Hall was built. It was in 1961 that the Autorama was moved to the then new Cobo Hall. All of this from the fertile hot rod minds of the Michigan Hot Rod Association whose original idea was to hold the car show to raise money for a drag strip.
The Detroit Autorama may be best known for its Don Ridler Memorial Award named after the shows first promoter, Don Ridler. The prize includes a check for $10,000, a GM Performance Parts engine, a custom trophy and the oh so prized jacket. It is presented to the most outstanding new custom car, shown for the first time anywhere. Stay tuned to this page of the Street Rodder website (www.streetrodderweb.com) as we unveil the Great 8 from which the eventual Ridler winner is selected.
In the meantime Street Rodder is proud to be showing two cars for the first time at the show. One is the Factory Five Hot Rod 33 (comes in a roadster or coupe body style), a new entry into the ever expanding hot rod marketplace. It is powered by a three-valve Ford modular V-8 linked to a five-speed transmission. What you see before you is the SR project vehicle that will be coming soon to the pages of SR. It was built through the efforts of Factory Five Racing out of Wareham, Massachusetts, at the shop of none other than Dave Perewitz of Perewitz Cycle Fabrication out of Bridgewater, Massachusetts. The famous bike builder is a longtime hot rodder himself and always wanted to be involved with a street rod project-viola here's Dave's first shot and the craftsmanship is amazing along with a wild paint job, but then we didn't expect anything less.
Stay tuned as there is lots more to see from Detroit '09.