Annual car show set for July 9-11Pace and Race is the theme of the 2015 Iola Old Car Show, held July 9-11 at the Iola Car Show Grounds.
Special guests, great displays, new activities and a large swap meet help keep the annual show exciting for old car junkies.
‘Counting Cars’ TV star Ryan Evans, the senior airbrush artist at Count’s Kustoms and a star on the History Channel’s hit TV show “Counting Cars,” is one of the guests at Iola ‘15.
Evans is sponsored by Vintage Works, a hobbyist’s source for professional services such as sandblasting, powder coating, machining and metal fabrication.
A 1973 Chrysler Newport will be given away during the Iola Old Car Show’s new “Super Saturday” activities. The 1973 vintage Chrysler is a one-owner car with two build sheets.
The Chrysler will be presented to one winning attendee by its donor, the non-profit Rawhide Boys Ranch of New London. For a chance to win, fill out an entry form in the “Teamed to Learn” exhibit tent during the show.
Iola Old Car Show visitors will have a chance to win the Chrysler by completing an entry form in the “Teamed to Learn” exhibit tent during the show.
There will be many other great prizes offered on Saturday. Coker Tire, the S.S. Badger, Ho-Chunk Casino, Miller Electric, General Beer and Mitsubishi and Shoemaker Electric have each donated prizes to be given away after the Old Cars Weekly and Iola ’15 Pass-in-Review parade, which begins at 3 p.m.
Swamp Rat Don “Big Daddy” Garlits, a living and still-racing legend, will also be at Iola ‘15.
One of the cars to sport his world-famous drag racing innovations is Swamp Rat 12-A. This dragster was built in 1967 with a 137-inch wheelbase chassis as an experiment.
Garlits admitted the Swamp Rat was a failure on the track. He sold it, then bought it back in 1987. Again, it sat.
In 2007, “MoPar called me to see if I would like to build a 6.4 (liter), late-model Hemi blown-fuel engine. I did and installed it into Swamp Rat 12-A,” Garlits said.
Garlits will be on hand with his Swamp Rat 12-A dragster, which he’ll fire up multiple times on Friday and Saturday during the show. It will lead several “cackstarts” with other period dragsters during the Iola Old Car Show from its place near the “Theme Tent.”
Given Wisconsin’s huge role in racing, the “Pace & Race” was a natural idea for the gigantic event. Dozens of race cars and dozens of pace cars have pre-registered for the theme area of Iola ’15.
Among the race cars, look for a 1914 Indian board track racer, a 1923 Packard Indy 500 racer, a 1970 Buick GS State 2 race car, a 1952 Cunningham C3 race car and many other restored racers.
There will also be a small display of “barn find” period race cars that still show the battle scars from their heyday on the track.
The pace car display includes many cars that actually paced the race at the Indianapolis 500, plus a huge selection of Indy 500 pace car replicas. There will also be a unique Corvair pace car used on a racetrack back in the day.
When Gary Leidich bought his 1963 Chevrolet Impala in September 2013, a thick layer of dust and dirt belied the fact it had just 11 miles on the odometer.
The Janesville-built Impala was one of 50 unsold new Chevrolets stashed by Pierce, Nebraska, car dealer Ray Lambrecht beginning in the 1950s. Lambrecht’s collection of “new old” Chevrolets was auctioned in September 2013.
Since buying the car at that auction, Leidich has thoroughly cleaned the Impala and made it run. He looks forward to sharing the car at the 2015 Iola Old Car Show and learning more about it from show attendees who may have had a hand in building the car at the Janesville assembly plant.
When Ford announced it would stop building Mustang convertibles at the end of the 1973 model year, a Wisconsin Mustang convertible owner ran out and ordered a new one as backup to her 1966 and 1968 Mustang convertibles.
She never needed the 1973 Mustang convertible – she’s still driving her 1968 droptop. In 2014, she sold her unused 1973 Mustang convertible with 37 miles on the odometer.
The new Wisconsin owner has since accumulated a couple dozen more miles on the odometer, and it now reads 60 miles. The unrestored 1973 Mustang will be featured next to the low mileage 1963 Impala convertible in the “Teamed to Learn” tent.
A prototype from America’s newest car company will debut at Iola ‘15. The Elio P4 prototype will be displayed near the “Teamed to Learn” tent by Jerome Vassallo, vice president of sales for Elio Motors of Phoenix, Arizona. He will passout information and answer questions while allowing show attendees to try on the Elio prototype for size.
Pass-in-Review
In association with the Iola Old Car Show, Old Cars Weekly will present a Pass-in-Review parade at 3 p.m. Saturday.
The parade will feature many of the show cars in the Blue Ribbon Concours, Theme Tent and other areas of the show. Many of the cars to be featured in the Pass-in-Review are previous Old Cars Weekly cover cars, or will be soon.
The Pass-in-Review will be held between the Iola Old Car Show Activity Center and the Old Cars Weekly office building, adjacent to the “Theme Tent.”
Star quarterbacks from the MoPar and Ford campuses will be part of a special “Class of ’64” display in the “Pace & Race” Theme Tent of Iola ’15.
Seth Rohde will bring two MoPar factory drag cars – a 1964 Plymouth drag raced as “The Hairbender” and a 1965 Dodge originally raced as “The High and Mighty.” Both cars are very rare and sport the new-for-1964 Hemi performance engine.
Jack Hazelgren will bring “The Little Rattler,” a 1964 Ford Thunderbolt. The coupe packs a 427-cid Ford V-8 and represents the mid-size factory Ford lightweight race cars that tore up racetracks across the country in ’64, sometimes competing with the Hemi lightweights like those owned by Rohde.