By David Rogers. BLOWING ROCK, N.C. — America’s love affair with motorized vehicles is well over a century old — and that passion was on display June 16 when Hot Rod magazine’s “Power Tour 2023” swept through the High Country.
A lot of garages around the country are surely empty this weekend. A reported 6,000 cars, trucks, and curiosities are part of the invasion that kept U.S. 321 and NC-105 clogged up — with history — through Blowing Rock and Boone this morning. Some of the hot rods are of recent vintage, but many others are much older than the 75 years Hot Rod magazine (launched in 1948) is celebrating with this journey.
One of the vehicles more closely resembled a grounded jet, celebrating the “lemons” that periodically rolled off the assembly lines in the early days of auto manufacturing and are (thankfully) less prevalent with today’s advanced automotive technology.
Chevrolet, Ford, Cadillac, GMC, Plymouth, Dodge, Ram were all represented. McLaren, Challenger, Roadrunner, Mustang, Corvette, Thunderbird, Camara and Impala, too. Sure, there were plenty of acronyms: GT, SS, STS, GTO, to name a few.
There were cars and trucks of every size, description, and color. Some looked like they had just come off the showroom floor, burnished bright red, black, green, brown, purple, orange, yellow, or blue, perhaps even two-tone. Others graced the highway au natural, their age and wear proudly on display, too.
A long, black Thunderbird from the 60s might easily have jumped off the pages of a Mario Puzo novel about the Mafia. One has to wonder whether a “muscle car” with the engine popping up through the hood is actually street legal on any other day of the year.
Almost all of the vehicles brought with them a friendly wave from driver and passenger directed to the many bystanders along the sidewalks. And, of course, there was plenty of horn-honking and revving up those engines.
One “low-rider” was mere millimeters off the pavement. Beware of speedbumps. Others had obviously been customized with lift kits.
Axle-back, header-back, cat-back… you name it, the exhaust system of choice largely depends on the preferences of who is doing the customization. They were likely all represented among the entries in this cavalcade of power.
Surfboards in the mountains may have seemed out of place in any other context…
Officially, the event is called, “The 29th annual HOT ROD Power Tour Driven by Continental Tire.” It kicked off from Atlanta Motor Speedway on June 12, serpentined through Georgia and South Carolina to the State Fairgrounds in Columbia, S.C., negotiated a visit north to Rockingham Speedway, then to the zMAX Dragway adjacent to Charlotte Motor Speedway in Concord, before traveling through the High Country to its finish line at the Bristol Motor Speedway in Tennessee.
Nearly 6,000 vehicles leaving one spot within a couple of hours of each other all headed for the same destination? If you are in Los Angeles, that sounds like a good recipe for traffic jams, frayed nerves. In the South heading toward a weekend? Participants say it is a good time — even if a few of the long lines at gas stations along the way were reminiscent of 1974 gas rationing.
For participants and bystanders alike, it was often a walk down memory lane.
BONUS PHOTOS
