THE DAILY COURIER

4/29/2005 5:00:00 AM Email this article • Print this article Hot rods are cool

Rod and Custom Car Show rides into Prescott May 7

By JOANNA DODDER The Daily Courier

PRESCOTT -- More than 100 street rods will cruise into town May 7 for the 8th annual Rod and Custom Car Show.   The Mountain Top Street Rodders club sponsors the show from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday, May 7, on the grass field of the Prescott Mile High Middle School, along Goodwin Street just a half-block southwest of the courthouse plaza.

The show attracted about 150 vehicles from Arizona and neighboring states last year.  Cars will start arriving May 6 for the Friday Nite Cruise at the M&I Bank parking lot.
The local club has about 50 members, including relatively new Prescott residents who brought their street rods from California.  "There are a lot of nice cars in town now," observed Katy Standhardt, wife of the show's chair, Don Standhardt.

Cars originally built in 1959 and earlier are eligible for the show, and they can be modified. They can be street rods, customs, classics, antiques or specialty vehicles.
The show charges a $2 attendance fee to adults, but children get in free. Participating vehicles pay a $30 entry fee and get a goody bag, door prize raffle ticket and T-shirt.
Nearly all the proceeds from the show entrant and attendance fees go to charity.

People attending the show also can buy tickets for a cash bonanza prize of $1,000 and other raffle prizes.  The show is the biggest fundraiser of the year for the middle school, which gets proceeds from the attendance fee and runs a concession stand.  The show also gave $10,000 last year to the American Cancer Society's Camp Sunrise near Payson.

The club uses some of the proceeds for its own "Random Good Deeds" program that gives money to local people who "fall through the cracks in the system," said Kevin Gilmore, a founding member of the Mountain Top Street Rodders who owns a 1939 Pontiac. For example, the club bought Christmas gifts for assisted living center residents and oxygen for a man who needed it on a plane ride to his daughter's wedding.

The club lets the sponsor of each trophy pick the car they want to receive the trophy.   Don Stone of McGuireville created all the unique Arizona sandstone trophies in the shape of street rods, while Don Blazer of Chino Valley crafted the sandstone bases.  Mountain Top club members aren't eligible for any of the trophies.

For more information or to reserve a vendor space, call show chair Don Standhardt at 776-8813.
 

THE DAILY COURIER
4/29/2005 5:00:00 AM Email this article • Print this article 

Local rodder never grew out of hobby

By JOANNA DODDER The Daily Courier

PRESCOTT -- Back in the 1950s when hot rods were a new fad, Prescott teens enjoyed cruising Gurley Street and the courthouse plaza, then making a pit stop at the local Dairy Queen to hang out.  Of course, hot rods were made to race, and teens such as Don Standhardt had their own favorite spot for drag racing too, on a strip of old Highway 89A between Prescott and Prescott Valley.

Being teens in 1950s hot rods, they couldn't help driving a bit too fast in town, too. The town was smaller then and the police weren't deputized, so the teens figured they were home free if they could get to the town limits at the spot where Checker Auto and AutoZone now sit in the middle of town along Miller Valley Road.  "It was a different world back then around here," Standhardt recalled. "All the policemen knew all the hot rodders, and if they stopped you, they just told you not to do it again."

Prescott teens in the 1950s also enjoyed hanging out at the Elks Theater, the now-defunct drive-in and the former pool at Granite Dells. Don remembers water skiing on Watson Lake too.   Illegal drugs were non-existent in Prescott schools back then, and some guys drank alcohol but they were the exception, Don said.

Don and his buddies in the Pipers car club got their "high" on hot rods. They often gathered in someone's backyard, taking apart a car and working on it. Don's job working for the Chinese owners of the Palace Café on Whiskey Row helped finance his hot rod habit.  "Every little town had its own car club back then," recalled Don's wife Katy, who moved to Prescott in 1977.  Don went through cars like children go through clothes, buying and modifying a 1944 coupe with an Oldsmobile V-8 engine in high school, then moving to a 1956 Chevy in 1957 just before graduating from high school.

"Like they say, when we got to high school it was a babe magnet," Don said of the hot rods. He bought a brand-new 1960 Ford shortly after high school, but totaled it while racing a couple of motorcycles down Mingus Mountain, so he then moved on to a 1960 T-Bird.  Don is happily married now and doesn't need a babe magnet, but he never stopped buying and rebuilding hot rods, which people now commonly call street rods.  Katy understands the babe magnet concept well.

"If I'm in one of those cars, every other car is waving," Katy said.  Don is still in a car club, too. It's called the Mountain Top Street Rodders. Katy also is a member.

"I enjoy the companionship of a car club because they do fun things," such as cruise nights, car shows and other events, Katy said.  Don recently sold his 1962 Corvette so he could buy every street rodder's dream, a souped-up 1933 Ford three-window coupe. It's definitely something that turns heads, all peach with a fuel-injected Chevy Crate 350-cubic-inch engine, incredibly clean lines (the gas cap is in a carpet-covered box in the trunk), and all the modern conveniences -- power windows, air conditioning and tilt steering wheel.   He searched the Internet for months, then ended up finding the retro rod right here in Prescott.

In its original condition, the coupe had a four-cylinder, 40-horsepower engine that topped out at about 50 miles per hour. Now Don figures it cruises at 80 mph and easily could top 100, though he doesn't say whether he's tried it.  When he took it out for a spin this week, Don played music that he first enjoyed in the 1950s, but now it's on a compact disc.

Don recently bought a 1928 Ford Roadster too, but its condition is a world apart from the '33 Ford. When his son saw it, he threatened to call the "Pimp My Ride" TV show that restores beat-up cars.  Katy saw it while taking a walk during a Greeley, Colo., car show and ran back to tell Don about it, but he'd already sniffed it out and bought it.

It basically was a rusted-out, bent-up shell, but Don's rebuilding it from the bottom up. He's already added a new frame, 350-cubic-inch Chevy engine and 350 turbo automatic transmission.  It won't be ready in time for the Mountain Top Street Rodders' Rod and Custom Car Show that Don chairs on Saturday, May 7, but the '33 coupe certainly will do.

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