Motor Head {road scholar}: Show time

MONEY, CLEANLINESS KEYS TO CAR SHOW SUCCESS

By Newt Briggs

At Sunday's 10th annual Underground Truck and Car Show at the Fremont Street Experience, it didn't matter what kind of ride you were rolling--a 1957 Ford Mustang, a 1984 Toyota pickup or a 2001 Plymouth Prowler, to name a few. It didn't matter if you had four, eight, 10, 12, 16 or 20 switches, or if you'd stuck with the original suspension and just slapped a pair of old-school whitewall tires on the rims. It didn't even matter if the car would start (although a bowel-rattling V8 was likely to earn a second look from a judge).

What really mattered was that the car was clean--"straight" in some vernaculars, "pretty" to the layperson. As any show veteran will tell you, car shows like the Underground are strictly superficial. They are the places where turbocharged muscle cars and jacked-up SUVs are reduced to $100,000 ornaments. They are Miss America stripped down to the swimsuit competition.

And they require hours, sometimes days, of preparation. Regardless of the make or model, the car has to be waxed and polished from top to bottom. That, of course, assumes the paint isn't marred by scratches or fisheyes or drips; if it is, then plan on breaking out the power sander and giving the body a makeover.

And then there are the dirty jobs: Did you scrape the crud out of the wheel wells? Did you pick every last piece of bug and grit out of the radiator? Did you get down with a spray bottle and a rag and buff the frame rails until they gleamed?

If you didn't, then you were better off leaving your wheels at home. The Underground may be an open competition, but it doesn't cater to hobbyists--the kind of people who think that WD-40, Bondo and spray paint are the solution to every automotive problem. They wouldn't stand a snowball's chance in an ignition chamber against dedicated motorheads like Francisco Franco.

Almost a decade ago, Franco purchased a stock 1984 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme from a local dealer. Over the next six years, he stripped out the interior, had the car custom painted, installed state-of-the-art hydraulics and trimmed the whole thing out in almond, orange and clear vinyl. The project cost him upwards of $40,000--twenty times what he paid for the car originally.

"I did everything backwards," admits Franco, a member of UCE, North America's largest lowrider club. "Now I could turn around and build the same car for half the money in a couple of months. I should have taken the body off of the frame and done it from the inside-out. Instead, I did the paint first, then the suspension, then the interior and finally the motor. I had to go back and touch up everything."

Like almost everyone at the show, Franco doesn't really sweat the money. People throw around lavish sums like they're badges of honor: $25,000 on Ronald Anderson's 1991 Chevy Caprice, $40,000 on Mike Santella's 1987 Nissan pickup, $50,000 on Matt Kester's 1997 Mitsubishi Eclipse RS. On the car show circuit, says Chuck White, money is just a means to an end.

"A car show is like an art show in a gallery," says White, who opted not to enter his prized 1966 Volkswagen Bus ($20,000) in the weekend competition. "The question isn't how much it costs, but whether or not we can put a price on the result. Some people can. Those are the people that are in it for the investment. And then there are those that do it simply because they want something perfect in their lives, whatever the cost."

"Not that money is the only important factor," White continues. "I mean, any jackass can buy a bunch of chrome parts and bolt them onto an engine block. You've got to be willing to put the time in, to examine every part of the car and make sure it's letter-perfect."

Dave and Dino, two judges at the show, confirm White's analysis. All day, Dino has been crawling under cars, inspecting wheel wells and undercarriages. He hasn't liked what he's seen.

"Except for a handful of cars, every single undercarriage I've looked at has been a mess," Dino says as he brushes some road grit off his hands. "All it takes is a power washer and a brush. It can be the difference between an everyday driver and a true show car."

And even those who don't know exactly what to look for still have a good idea of what they like. Newlywed Betty Joe Stout from Albuquerque, N.M., eyes a tricked-out, Fast and the Furious-worthy Honda Civic.

"I don't know how to say it," she says, pointing at the shimmering blue paint on the car. "I like it when everything is flat like glass. No, it's more like water, like if you touched it you could watch ripples spread out over the hood."