Attention, America! If you're dragging your hot rod around in a trailer, you're missing a whole bunch of fun. That's the point we were trying to make in 1993, when we first announced the idea of an R&C-hosted cross-country cruise. Trailering was becoming a trend. We wanted to get back to the tradition of driving, so we organized a series of cruises and a show and named the whole thing Americruise.
Every year since then, we've been trying to make Americruise better, tweaking the event we invented to make sure our week on the road was as fun as possible. This year, we had two tours, one leaving from Mooneyes in Southern California and one leaving from Vintage Air in San Antonio, both bound for the Goodguys Hot Rod Nats in Indianapolis. Relying on the old saying about getting there being half the fun, we put all our attention on getting there, and let Goodguys handle the car show part. It was a good move.
On June 1, the Mooneyes leg of the tour originated at (where else?) Mooneyes in Santa Fe Springs, California. Tour leader Bob Kriezel from Mooneyes, R&C Editor Jim Rizzo, and a bunch of ambitious Americruisers cruised through the Southwest with a stop in Kingman, Arizona, a hospitality stop at Mild To Wild Classics in Albuquerque, other stops in New Mexico and Amarillo, Texas, and a shop tour of Parr Automotive in Oklahoma City, before ending up in Grand Lake, Oklahoma, at Starbird's National Rod & Custom Car Hall of Fame museum.
The Mooneyes gang was already four days on the road when the Vintage Air tour left San Antonio on their way to Painless Performance's huge new facility in Fort Worth. On Saturday, the Texas gang said adios to the interstate and hit the original Route 66 outside of Muskogee, Oklahoma.
At Starbird's, both of our Americruise tours melded into one large group of great cars, great trucks, and great people. Starbird opened up the Museum and Hall of Fame, hired a band and some barbecue cooks, and filled his property with hundreds of cars, saving a primo spot for the tour cars. In addition, he invited out all his old-time hot rodding buddies, giving Americruisers a chance to shake hands with some of the living legends of this hobby.
On the way to Tulsa, the combined Americruise tours stopped at Hot Rod Garage in Sand Springs. That afternoon we rolled into Tulsa, where we were joined by almost 2,000 Hot Rod Power Tour participants en route to Green Bay, Wisconsin.
In West Mineral, Kansas, on Monday, we got to crawl all over Big Brutus, the world's largest electric shovel. A series of scenic two-lanes took us to Odd Rod Creations, the rod shop in Carl Junction, Missouri, owned by the Jackson family, including sons Rusty, Randy, and Ryan (that's Ryan's '35 Chevy on the cover this month). From there we headed to the fairgrounds in Springfield, Missouri, to join Power Tour festivities again.