Brother's Truck Parts had its 10th annual Chevy & GMC Show 'n' Shine Truck Show at Featherly Park in Anaheim, California, on Sunday, and here are a few of my favorites. Check out the Classic Trucks Web site for future coverage.

For many of us here in Southern California, the Goodguys Del Mar Rod & Custom Nationals has served as the event that kicks off the rod-run season and the start of summer for the past eight years. This year, the Del Mar Nats was actually the third event for the Goodguys, preceded by the Orange County Get-Together in Costa Mesa, California, and the All American Get-Together in Pleasanton, California, but served as our first official magazine outing for the '08 season.

The city of Tulsa, Oklahoma, welcomed Darryl Starbird's annual car show with open arms, once again-can this really be the 44th edition? My, how the time flies when you're havin' fun, and you can't go to a Starbird show without havin' fun; it's against the rules, you know.

This particular event had lots of fun things to do and see, like listen to a live band, buy a raffle ticket for a 350 crate engine, and watch the engine blow contest. The Prowlers is a family-oriented club, and, just like other families, they've had their ups and downs over time. It's a close-knit group, and members are determined to see that the fun they've had with their rides over the past 60 years will continue, and they want to share that enthusiasm with as many people as possible.

In 1973, several Daytona Beach area hot rodders attempted to enter their hot rods in a local antique car show, but they were told their style of cars was not welcome. With that rejection, the Daytona Beach Turkey Run began the following year at a local shopping center parking lot. After several venue changes, the original 45-car count has grown to more than 5,000 car show entrants, and the event now takes place in the giant infield of the Daytona International Speedway.

Do you remember the movie Back to the Future with Michael J. Fox as Marty McFly and Christopher Lloyd as Dr. Emmett Brown? Doc Brown, Marty's friend, built a time machine out of a DeLorean, and Marty ended up being unwittingly transplanted back in time 30 years. Every time you go to a car show, a part of you is brought back to a bygone era, and you can envision the cars and people of that period if you shut your eyes and think long and hard.

Texas in the summer can be a very unforgiving place to those not acclimated to the searing heat and brutal gulf coast humidity, but when i saw that the Lone star nationals weren't until the beginning of october, i breathed a sigh of relief. to make the trip even better, Rick Love and the crew at Vintage air opened their doors to me and extended an invitation to fly in to san antonio and hit the road in one of their staff cars. there was only one catch, Rick warned me, "you're driving the only car in the company fleet that doesn't have a/c!" i shrugged it off and assured him that driving to an event in any form of vintage tin would be a welcome change of pace to the cookiecutter rental cars i've gotten stuck with throughout the year. Plus a chance to drive across texas with the Vintage air crew sounded great, so i changed my travel plans to accommodate the couple of extra driving days.

The Goodguys brought its Goodtimes to the Chicagoland speedway in Joliet, Illinois, this past september, kicking off the inaugural Peak Chicagoland nationals at the Chicagoland speedway. More than 2,000 hot rods, customs, trucks, and street machines through '72 gave the crowd, in excess of 45,000, plenty to look at throughout the week end. Perfect autumn weather combined with the drone of the Richard Petty Driving Experience nasCaR ride-along provided the atmosphere as the classics parked, cruised, and perused.

Let me start off by saying that this year's Great Race participant turnout was a little less than we had hoped for. Last year there were 115 entries, a competing high school contingent, and a few special guest participants; this year there were 72 entries, and seven of those joined midway in Dallas while others dropped out having only signed up for the first half ... no high school teams, no Geico lizard, no national Guard teams-it was sorely lacking in comparison to a year ago.

The Performance World Custom Car & Truck Show leg of the PPG / STREET RODDER Road Tour, sponsored by the folks who put on the largest indoor car show in Canada, marked the first time the Road Tour has traveled out of the United States. Beginning in Kalamazoo, Michigan, at the NSRA Nationals North and then traveling on to the NSRA Northeast Nationals in Burlington, Vermont, the participants on this leg of the tour were ready for some beautiful scenery in Canada. An even nicer surprise was that the beauty and warmth of the folks who greeted us on our trip though Canada were just as spectacular as the scenery.

Mike Warn of Wilsonville, Oregon takes home the coveted Ridler award for his 1960 Rambler complete with Ferrari power.

For almost every year since the Southern California Timing Association's inception in 1937, racers have come to the desert's dry lakes to race against the clock and perhaps capture a bit of glory in owning a land speed record. That is until another guy with the same dream comes along and takes it from you by running a tenth of a second faster!

The C.W. Moss leg of the PPG / STREET RODDER road Tour started on Monday morning after the L.A. roadsters' Father's Day Show. The response to this tour was fantastic-with 43 cars registered to participate- and everyone was anxious to head out on the highway. The route we took to the NSrA rocky Mountain Nationals in Pueblo, Colorado, wound through some of the most beautiful areas in the Southwest. C.W. Moss owner Derrick Looney and his staff were ready for the crowd and we got a great send-off from their classic showroom in the city ofOrange, California.

Imagine getting in on the ground floor of something great. Maybe it would have been buying into an unknown computer company called Apple in 1976 or, more recently, having the insight to buy Google stock when it went public in 2004, but it's great when you can be there to participate in the start-up of something good.

One of the biggest decisions car owners face each and every year is planning just where to go during the peak of rodding season. Those folks who are lucky enough to live on the West Coast can drive the skins off their rides year-round, whereas many of us on the East Coast have only a few glory months to revel in.

Historic hot rods are no longer considered outlaws at the famed Pebble Beach Concours d'Elegance. Beginning in 1997 and featured since in odd-numbered years, the event's hot rod class has included historic coupes (Bob and Dick Pierson's heavily hammered '34), road-racing rods (the ex-Duffy Livingston Eliminator T), classic open cars (such as the ex-Doane Spencer roadster), and early customs (Jack Calori's chopped and smoothed '36 Ford).

The cream of the topless crop was gathered in fierce competition for the coveted America's Most Beautiful Roadster award. The Deuce was once again the dominant force, but there was a pair of '36s, a Model T and A, giving hope to those who are sick of the same old highboys. We'll post the winner once announced, but in the meantime, check out the field.

"KKOA, this is Jerry." "Jerry, this is Geoff Carter from STREET RODDER, how are you doing?"

It's true, the 59th annual Bonneville Nationals was a record-setting event. By the time the official program went to press, 306 automotive pre-entries were already submitted! By the time the meet ended-seven hot days later-more than 500 car and bike entrants had paid Southern California Timing Association Treasurer Warren Bullis enough twenty-dollar bills for the privilege of making a record attempt on one of the two short/long, three-/five-mile combination courses that lead to Floating Mountain, so called because it appears to dance on the hazy horizon.

Both the NSRA Milwaukee Nationals and the Right Coast Syracuse Nationals are relatively new on the car-show scene. They both welcome the later-model cars to their events and attract street rods, customs, musclecars, and special interest vehicles. This year the two events landed on back-to-back weekends so they were chosen as the bookends to the Classic Automobilia leg of the Street Rodder Road Tour. Started in 1989, Classic Automobilia in Youngstown, Ohio, specializes in pedal cars, vintage gas station items, and all those items that make the car hobby even more fun.

If you had the opportunity to throw a party for the Ford Flathead engine and the vehicle in which it first appeared, the '32 Ford, where would that party be held? That was the question put forth more than a year ago by a group of like-minded rodders who felt the only answer to the question was Dearborn, Michigan, the birthplace of both icons.

The Eaton Detroit Spring leg of the 2007 STREET RODDER / PPG Road Tour started off fantastically with beautiful weather and a great location to enjoy the 13th annual Woodward Dream Cruise. Sandy and Mike Eaton were our hosts for the entire week's activities as we traveled from Detroit to the NSRA Nationals in Richmond, Virginia. Saturday's Dream Cruise lived up to its reputation as the largest single-day automotive event on the planet.

When the last cars rolled out of the Alameda County Fairgrounds this past August and Goodguys closed the books on the 21st annual Texaco/Havoline West Coast Nationals, the organization did so on one of the biggest gatherings the West Coast Nats has ever seen. Pristine weather combined with beautiful grounds on which to hold the event and more than a handful of exhibition buildings displaying everything from the newest products to hit the aftermarket industry to fully operable, miniature gas engines, Pleasanton had something to offer every gearhead in attendance. And if the car show and exhibition halls were not enough, out on the south side of the fairgrounds was an excellent swap meet and car corral with plenty of good buys. The California Bay Area is known for its moderate, year-round weather and nowhere in the Bay Area is this as evident as it is in Pleasanton in August.

The Street Rod Nats on a Shoestring
Every year at the Street Rod Nats, we're pleasantly surprised with the overwhelming amount of cars driven to the event and are obviously purpose-built. Rock chips, dead bugs, leaky motors, and worn-out tire treads are all indications that the car was driven to the event and is not a trailer queen. You couldn't count on one hand the number of guys who are surprised when approached about their car. "Why do you want to shoot my car? It's just a driver," is a common response. But, that's what street rodding is all about to us. It's not about power parking at the host hotel or pushing the car onto glass and chrome pedestals inside the exhibition hall-it's about driving. And it doesn't take $50,000 to build a bitchin', dependable street rod. All it takes is a little ingenuity, hard work, and dedication.

It's always fun to get out and drive your hot rod, and when you can't, make sure you know someone who can. Road trips are an especially joyous occasion, and when it is to an event like the NSRA Street Rod Nats in Louisville, Kentucky, well, that's akin to traveling to the Promised Land (with proper apologies to Bonneville and the dry lakes).